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GREAT EXPECTATIONS 



HARD TIMES 



.^>(m. 




WITH ESTELLA AFTER ALL. 



GEEAT EXPECTATIONS 



AND 



HARD TIMES 




CHARLES' DICKENS 



WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY MARCUS STONE, 
F. A. FRASER, AND F. WALKER 



A REPRINT OF THE EDITION CORRECTED BY THE 

AUTHOR IN 1869, WITH AN INTRODUCTION, BIOGRAPHICAL 

AND BIBLIOGRAPHICAL, BY CHARLES DICKENS 

THE YOUNGER 






AUG 26 1B95 A r^ 



MACMILLAN AND CO. 

AND LONDON 
1895 



All rights reserved 



/v^ 



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f«;v3> 



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Copyright, 1895, 
By MACMILLAN AND CO. 



Norhjoolr ^ress : 

J. S. Gushing & Co. — Berwick & Smith. 

Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 



CONTENTS. 

GREAT EXPECTATIONS and HAED TIMES. 

PAGE 

List of Illustrations xi 

Introduction xiii 

HAED TIMES. 

BOOK THE FIRST — SOWING. 

CHAPTER I 
The One Thing Needful 421 

CHAPTER II 
Murdering the Innocents 422 

CHAPTER III 
A Loophole 427 

CHAPTER IV 
Mr. Bounderby 431 

CHAPTER V 
The Key-note 437 

CHAPTER VI 

Sleary's Horsemanship 442 

vii 



viii CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER VII 

PAGE 

Mrs. Sparsit 454 



CHAPTER VIII 
Never Wonder 459 

CHAPTER IX 
Sissy's Progress 464 

CHAPTER X 
Stephen Blackpool 470 

CHAPTER XI 
No Way Out 475 

CHAPTER XII 
The Old Woman , .481 

CHAPTER XIII 
Rachael 485 

CHAPTER XIV 

The Great Manufacturer 492 

CHAPTER XV 
Father and Daughter 497 

CHAPTER XVI 

Husband and Wife 503 



CONTENTS. IX 

BOOK THE SlLCOl!iD — REAPING. 
CHAPTER I 

PAGE 

Effects in the Bank 508 

CHAPTER II 
Mr. James Harthouse 519 

CHAPTER III 
The Whelp 526 

CHAPTER IV 
Men and Brothers 531 

CHAPTER V 
Men and Masters 537 

CHAPTER VI 
Fading Away 542 

CHAPTER VII 
Gunpowder 552 

CHAPTER VIII 
Explosion 564 

CHAPTER IX 
Hearing the Last of it 574 

CHAPTER X 

Mrs. Sparsit's Staircase 581 



X CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER XI 

PAGE 

Lower and Lower 584 

CHAPTER XII 
Down 592 

BOOK THE TKIRB— GARNERING. 

CHAPTER I 
Another Thing Needful 597 

CHAPTER II 
Very Ridiculous 602 

CHAPTER III 
Very Decided 610 

CHAPTER IV 
Lost 617 

CHAPTER V 
Found 625 

CHAPTER VI 
The Starlight 632 

CHAPTER VII 
Whelp-hunting 642 

CHAPTER VIII 
Philosophical . .652 

CHAPTER IX 
Final 657 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 



GEEAT EXPECTATIONS. 



WITH ESTELLA AFTER ALL . 

IN THE CHURCHYARD . 

pip's first LETTER 

PIP AVAITS OX MISS HAVISHAM 

OLD ORLICK AMONG THE CINDERS 

LECTURING ON CAPITAL 

JOE PERPLEXED .... 

A RUBBER AT MISS HAVISIIAM's . 

THE TRICKS OF TRABB's BOY 

TAKING LEAVE OF JOE 

ESTELLA DEFENDS HERSELF 

UNCLE PROVIS RECITES HIS AVRONGS 

"don't GO home!" 

THE MAN THAT 3IADE PIP 

A PERILOUS PASS .... 



Frontispiece 

PAGE 

3 

38 
48 
98 
155 
189 
208 
211 
245 
261 
301 
314 
359 
365 



HAED TIMES. 



MR. SLEARY AND HIS DAUGHTER 

FACSIMILE OF TITLE-PAGE TO FIRST EDITION 

INTERVIEW WITH THE " VERY OBTRUSIVE LAD " 

xi 



418 
419 
443 



Xll 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 



PAGB 

STEPHEN AXD KACHAEL IX THE SICK-ROOM .... 487 

THE RECEPTION OF T03I BY HIS SISTER ..... 525 

MR. HARTHOUSE AND TOM GRADGRIXD IX THE GARDEN . . 561 

3IRS. SPARSIT WATCHIXG LOUISA IN THE WOOD . . . 589 

RACHAEL VINDICATES STEPHEN BLACKPOOL .... 620 

STEPHEN BLACKPOOL RECOVERED FROM THE OLD HELL SHAFT . 639 

SISSY AND LOUISA CONSULT MR. SLEARY ..... 647 



INTRODUCTION. 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

As the Old Curiosity Shop grew out of a short story which 
Charles Dickens had begun with the half-formed notion of 
Little Nell and the Grandfather in his mind, so Great Eoc- 
pectations arose out of similarly modest beginnings. In 1860 
he wrote to Mr. Forster, " for a little piece I have been writ- 
ing — or am writing ; for I hope to finish it to-day — such a 
very fine, new, and grotesque idea has opened upon me, that 
I begin to doubt whether I had not better cancel the little 
X^aper, and reserve the notion for a new book. You shall 
judge as soon as I get it printed. But it so opens out before 
me, that I can see the whole of a serial revolving on it in a 
most singular and comic manner." Out of the idea here 
spoken of came Pip, and Magwitch, and Joe Gargery, and 
all their surroundings. 

Owing to the want of public appreciation of a story of 
Charles Lever's — "A Day's Ride ; A Life's Romance " it was 
called — which was running at this time in All the Year 
Round ; and which was, indeed, quite unworthy of its 
author's reputation and powers, it was felt that, in the 
interests of the Journal, it was necessary that some ener- 
getic step should be taken to retrieve the ground that was 
being lost. Further consideration made it clear that it was 
most desirable that the Editor should come to the rescue 
with a story of his own ; and he accordingly abandoned the 
intention of working the " idea " above mentioned into a 
serial of the usual twenty-part length, and decided to use it 
for a shorter story to run through some thirty numbers of 
All the Year Round. 

He made the situation plain enough in a letter to Mr. 
Forster of the 4th of October, 1860. " Last week," he said, 
" I got to work on the new story. I had previously very 
carefully considered the state and prospects of All the Year 
Round, and, the more I considered them, the less hope I 



xiu 



xiv INTRODUCTION. 

saw of being able to get back now, to the profit of a separate 
publication in the old twenty numbers. However, I worked 
on, knowing that what I was doing would work into another 
groove ; and I called a council of war at the office on Tues- 
day. It was perfectly clear that the one thing to be done 
was for me to strike in. I have, therefore, decided to begin 
the story as of the length of the Tale of Two Cities on the 
first of December — begin publishing, that is. I must make 
the most I can out of the book. You shall have the first 
two or three weekly parts to-morrow. The name is Great 
Expectations. I think a good name ? " Later, he wrote : 
" The sacrifice of Great Expectations is really and truly 
made for myself. The property of All the Year Bound is 
far too valuable, in every way, to be much endangered. Our 
fall is not large, but we have a considerable advance in hand 
of the story we are now publishing, and there is no vitality 
in it, and no chance whatever of stopping the fall ; which, on 
the contrary, would be certain to increase. Now, if I went 
into a twenty-number serial, I should cut off my power of 
doing anything serial here for two good years — and that 
would be a most perilous thing. On the other hand, by 
dashing in now, I come in when most wanted ; and if Reade 
and Wilkie follow me, our course will be shaped out hand- 
somely and hopefully for between two and three years. 
A thousand pounds are to be paid for early proofs of the 
story to America." Later still, he explained: "The book 
will be written in the first person throughout, and during 
the first three weekly numbers you will find the hero to be 
a boy-child, like David. Then he will be an apprentice. 
You will not have to complain of the want of humour, as in 
the Tale of Two Cities. I have made the opening, I hope, 
in its general effect, exceedingly droll. I have put a child 
and a good-natured foolish man in relations that seem to me 
very funny. Of c Durse, I have got in the pivot on which 
the story will turn, too — and which, indeed, as you remem- 
ber, was the grotesque tragi-comic conception that first 
encouraged me. To be quite sure I had fallen into no 
unconscious repetitions, I read David Copperjield again the 
other day, and was affected by it to a degree jo\x. would 
hardly believe." 

The first instalment of Great Expectations appeared in 
number eighty -four in the fourth volume of the first series 
of All the Year Round, dated the 1st of December, 1860; 
the conclusion being published in niunber one hundred and 



INTRODUCTION. XV 

nineteen, in the fifth volume, the 3d of August, 1861. The 
history of the book during its composition was uneventful 
enough, and no difficulties appear to have arisen in connec- 
tion with its progress, except on such general lines as are 
indicated in a letter in which its author says, " it is a pity 
that the third portion cannot be read all at once, because its 
purpose would be much more apparent ; and the pity is the 
greater, because the general turn and tone of the working 
out or winding up will be away from all such things as they 
conventionally go. But what must be, must be. As to the 
planning out from week to week, nobody can imagine Avhat 
the difficulty is without trying. But, as in all such cases, 
when it is overcome, the pleasure is proportionate. Two 
months more will see me through it, I trust. All the iron 
is in the fire, and I have ' only ' to beat it out." Writing a 
little later to Macready, he said, " I have just finished my 
book of ' Great Expectations,' and am the worse for wear. 
Neuralgia pains in the face have troubled me a good deal, 
and the work has been pretty close. But I hope that the 
book is a good book, and I have no doubt of very soon 
throwing off the little damage it has done me." 
^ It has been objected to Great Expectations that its con- 
clusion is faulty and inartistic : firstly, because the whole 
intention and plan of the book are to a very great extent 
spoilt by the marriage of Pip and Estella ; and, secondly, 
because, in any case, her widowhood and second marriage 
are disposed of with a rapidity and a kind of nonchalance 
which really come upon the reader as a shock, as disagree- 
able as it is sudden. There is undoubted truth in this objec- 
tion, and the best evidence of the soundness of the general 
judgment on the point lies in the fact that the published 
conclusion is not that which was originally devised by 
Charles Dickens, but one which he was persuaded into 
adopting by Bulwer. " You will be surprised," Charles 
Dickens wrote to Mr. Forster, " t^ hear that I have changed 
the end of Great Expectations from and after Pip's return to 
Joe's, and finding his lit^e likeness there. Bulwer, who 
has been, as I think you know, extraordinarily taken by the 
book, so strongly urged it upon me, after reading the proofs, 
and supported his view with such good reasons that I 
resolved to make the change. ... I have put in as pretty 
a little piece of writing as I could, and I have no doubt the 
story will be more acceptable through the alteration." ^tore 
acceptable it was, probably,, to those readers who are never 



xvi INTRODUCTION. 

satisfied without " a happy ending/' but it is certain that 
the only really natural as well as artistic conclusion to the 
story was that which was originally intended by Charles 
Dickens, and which kept Pip and Estella apart. 

There was to be yet another alteration, amiough not one 
of great importance, in the closing words of the book. These, 
in All the Year Bound and in the three-volume reprint, ran, 
"I saw the shadow of no parting from her." In later edi- 
tions they read, " I saw no shadow of another parting from 
her." 

It has occasionally happened that controversies of quite a 
heated kind have sprung up over questions as to what par- 
ticular places or people Charles Dickens may have had in 
his mind when he described certain scenes or invented cer- 
tain characters. There can be no such difficulty in regard 
to Great Expectations. The description of the marsh coun- 
try about Joe Gargery's forge is so vivid that there Avould 
have been no difficulty in identifying it as the neighbour- 
hood of Cooling, near Eochester, even if Charles Dickens 
had not testified to the fact; while Satis House requires 
very little alteration to make it a portrait of the old Ees- 
toration House in Eochester itself. 

After its publication in All the Year Round, Great Expeo- 
tations was issued in three volumes at a guinea and a half, 
and, as almost the whole of the first edition was absorbed 
by the circulating libraries and soon became worn out, this 
has now become very scarce, and a clean copy in its origi- 
nal state is likely to fetch from £7 to £10. Mr. Charles 
Plumptre Johnson, in his Hints to Collectors (1885), has a 
significant warning on this head in reference to the four 
other editions through which the three-volume book ran. 
" These editions," he says, " have been transformed into first 
editions by some dishonest person, who has printed title- 
page as above, and has, no doubt, done a profitable trade 
with unsuspecting purchasers." 

The first cheap edition was published by Messrs. Chap- 
man & Hall in 1863, post 8vo, pp. 524, with frontispiece 
and vignette title-page by Marcus Stone, E. A. A series of 
twenty-one plates, drawn and etched by F. W. Pailthorpe, 
was published by Messrs. Eobson & Kerslake, and is now 
very scarce. In the Household Edition of Messrs. Chap- 
man & Hall Great Expectations was published, at three 
shillings, with twenty-six illustrations by J. A. Fraser. 



INTilODUCTION. xvii 

: (jfreat Expectations was publislied without a preface. Its 
dedication was in the following terms : 

AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED 

TO 
CHAUNCY HARE TOWNSHEND. 

Tlie original manuscript appears to have been lost or de- 
stroyed — at all events I have been unable to find any trace 
of it — but the proof-sheets, Mr. W. R. Hughes says, in his 
WeeWs Tramp in Dickens-Land, have been preserved in the 
Museum at Wisbech. 

The only dramatic version of the book which I have been 
able to trace is that of Mr. W. S. Gilbert, which was pro- 
duced by Miss Marie Litton at the Court Theatre, London, 
early in the seventies, and in which the performances that 
made most impression upon me at the time, and stand out 
most clearly in my recollection now, were the Joe Gargery 
of Edward Kighton, and the Jaggers of the late John 
Clayton. 



HARD TIMES. 

On the 20th of January, 1854, Charles Dickens sent Mr. 
Eorster a list of proposed titles for a new story, and asked 
his advice in the final selection. The names proposed were : 
1, According to Cocker ; 2, Prove It ; 3, Stubborn Things ; 
4, Mr. Gradgrind's Eacts; 5, The Grindstone; 6, Hard 
Times ; 7, Two and Two are Eour ; 8, Something Tangible ; 
9, Our Hard-headed Eriend ; 10, Rust and Dust ; 11, Simple 
Arithmetic ; 12, A Matter of Calculation ; 13, A Mere 
Question of Eigures ; 14, The Gradgrind Philosophy. Mr. 
Eorster's vote was for either 2, 6, or 11 ; Charles Dickens's 
own inclination was towards 6, 13, and 14 ; and Hard Times, 
being the only title as to which both were agreed, was ulti- 
mately selected. 

The story was first published in Household Words; the 
first instalment appearing in No. 210, dated the 1st of April, 
1854, and the last in No. 229, dated the 12th of August, in 
the same year. The history of its progress is absolutely 
uneventful, and, except for the inconveniences caused by its 
necessarily short instalments, it seems to have been a simple 



xviii INTRODUCTION. 

and straightforward piece of work enough. But, as Charles 
Dickens said himself, the difficulty of the space wias " crush- 
ing." "Nobody can have an idea of it," he declared, "who 
has not had an experience of patient fiction-writing with 
some elbow-room always, and open places in perspective. 
In this form, with any kind of regard to the current number, 
there is no such thing." It is remarkable that these diffi- 
culties should have made themselves so little manifest in 
the complete book, which shows, indeed, no sign of having 
been written with an eye to the arbitrary requirements of 
w^eekly publication. 

After its appearance in Household Words, the story w^as 
republished by Messrs. Bradbury & Evans in one volume 
post octavo, in cloth five shillings, — without illustrations or 
preface, and w^as simply 

INSCRIBED 

TO 

THOMAS CARLYLE. 

Hard Times came third (bound up with Pictures from 
Italy) in the third series of the cheap editions, and was pub- 
lished in that form, in cloth at "five shillings, by Messrs. 
Chapman & Hall in 1865. In the first Library Edition it w^as 
bound up wdth the second volume of Barnahy Budge. In 
the " Charles Dickens " Edition it was again combined with 
Pictures from Italy, and in the Household Edition of Messrs. 
Chapman & Hall, it occupied 134 pages of Nos. 282-290, in 
paper eighteen pence, and in cloth half a crown, and con- 
tained twenty illustrations by H. French. 

The original manuscript is at South Kensington. 

Successful as the story was, both in Household Words and 
in volume form, its strong advocacy of the " working-man '^ 
side of the question, and its absolute refusal to recognise 
any good thing in the master's case, or anything but harsh- 
ness and cold-blooded cruelty in the teachings of political 
economy, naturally found for it a good many enemies. The 
old-fashioned Tory views of Blackicood'' s Magazine n6 doubt 
influenced the criticism of a writer in its issue of April, 1855, 
who laid down the law in the following uncompromising 
style : " The book is more palpably of a made book than any 
of the manufactured articles we have lately seen. It is 
neither born out of the natural fruition of a mind and fancy 



INTKODUCTION. xix 

always astir — nor, after it has begun to be, do its characters 
and events proceed with the natural compulsion and impulse 
of life." Harriet Martineau, who may be accepted as a 
typical representative of the scientific political economists, 
complained that "another vexation is his vigorous errone- 
ousness about matters of science, as shown in Oliver Twist 
about the new Poor Law (which he confounds with the 
abrogated old one) and in Hard Times, about the controver- 
sies of employers." The cold Whiggery of Lord Macaulay, 
with its veneer of Liberalism and its real deep-rooted dis- 
trust of the people, found characteristic vent in this little 
sneer: "I read Dickens's Hard Times. , One excessively 
touching, heart-breaking passage, and the rest sullen social- 
ism. The evils he attacks he caricatures grossly, and with 
little humour." 

On the other hand, Mr. Ruskin, in a foot-note to " The 
Roots of Honour," the first of the essays which were pub- 
lished in 1862 under the title " Unto this Last," took a very 
different view of the matter — a view which was possibly as 
much tinged by his sympathies with the objects which 
Charles Dickens had before him, as the criticism of the 
other writers I have quoted were influenced by their antag- 
onism to them. 

" The essential value and truth of Dickens's writings," Mr. 
Euskin wrote, " have been unwisely lost sight of by many 
thoughtful persons, merely because he presents his truth 
with some colour of caricature. Unwisely, because Dickens's 
caricature, though often gross, is never mistaken. Allowing 
for his manner of telling them, the things he tells us are 
always true. I wish that he could think it right to limit 
his brilliant exaggeration to works written only for public 
amusement; and when he takes up a subject of high national 
importance, such as that which he handled in Hard Times, 
that he would use severer and more accurate analysis. The 
usefulness of that work (to my mind, in several respects, the 
greatest he has written) is with many persons seriously 
diminished because Mr. Bounderby is a dramatic monster, 
instead of a characteristic example of a worldly master ; and 
Stephen Blackpool a dramatic perfection, instead of a char- 
acteristic example of an honest workman. But let us not 
lose the use of Dickens's wit and insight, because he chooses 
to speak in a circle of stage fire. He is entirely right in 
his main drift and purpose in every book he has written ; 
and all of them, but especially Hard Times, should be 



XX INTRODUCTION. 

studied with close and earnest care by persons interested in 
social questions. They will find much that is partial, and, 
because partial, apparently unjust ; but if they examine all 
the evidence on the other side, which Dickens seems to over- 
look, it will appear, after all their trouble, that his view was 
the finally right one, grossly and sharply told." 

Charles Dickens gave a very plain exposition of what he 
had had in his mind in the following passage in a letter to 
Charles Knight, dated the 30th of January, 1854: "My 
satire is against those Avho see figures and averages and 
nothing else — the representatives of the wickedest and most 
enormous vice of this time — the men who, through long 
years to come, Avill do more to damage the real useful truths 
of political economy than I could do (if I tried) in my whole 
life ; the addled heads who would take the average of cold 
in the Crimea during twelve months as a reason for clothing 
a soldier in nankeens on a night when he would be frozen to 
death in fur, and who would comfort the labourer in travel- 
ling twelve miles a day to and from his work by telling him 
that the average distance of one inhabited place from another 
in the whole area of England is not more than four miles. 
Bah ! what have you to do with these ? " To Mrs. Gaskell 
he wrote a little later, " the monstrous claims at domination 
made by a certain class of manufacturers, and the extent to 
which the way is made easy for working men to slide into 
discontent under such hands, are within my scheme." 

As I have already said, the progress of Hard Times was 
uneventful enough, but, notwithstanding this, the work on 
the story " took it out " of its author considerably, if we may 
judge from the following extract from a letter to the Hon. 
Mrs. Eiehard Watson, dated the 1st of November, 1854: 
"Why I found myself so used-up after Hard Times I 
scarcely know, perhaps because I intended to do nothing in 
that way for a year, when the idea laid hold of me by the 
throat in a very violent manner, and because the compres- 
sion and close condensation necessary for that disjointed 
form of publication gave me j)erpetual trouble. But I really 
was tired, which is a result so very incomprehensible that I 
can't forget it." 

An adaptation of Hard Times, by a Mr. Fox Cooper, was 
produced at the Strand Theatre on Monday the 14th of 
August, 1854, and is indeed a remarkable work, concluding 
with a general all-round explanation at the mouth of the Old 
Hell Shaft, in the course of which Mr. Bounderby and Mr. 



INTKODUCTION. xxi 

Gradgrind use a good deal of strong language to one another 
and incidentally engage in a vigorous pugilistic encounter. 
Stephen Blackpool does not die, but marries Eachel at the 
instigation of Bounderby, who also promises £150 as a mar- 
riage portion — curiously overlooking the existence of the 
first Mrs. Blackpool altogether. Tom Gradgrind replaces 
the stolen money by Louisa's help, and the explanation that 
he had only moved it from one place to another seems to 
satisfy everybody — while it absolutely destroys all the point 
of the story — and Louisa, still more to the confusion of the 
original author's plan, goes back to Bounderby. The " tag " 
is so delightful in its unconscious absurdity that it deserves 
quotation in full. It runs thus : 

Louisa. Mr. Bounderby, I will now cheerfully accompany you 
back to the home you have provided for me, and must insist upon 
it that you allow your good mother to supjoly the place of Mrs. 
Sparsit. 

Bounderby. Well said, Louisa ; and that this may prove a week 
of happiness and rejoicing, I suspend work at the factory for seven 
days. 

Omnes. Huzza ! Huzza ! 

Bounderhy. But I will pay full wages during all the time to 
every man, woman, and child, and my wife Louisa shall distribute 
amongst you all £200, to be spent in providing you with a few 
necessaries and comforts these " Hard Times." 

Omnes. Huzza ! Huzza ! 

(^Picture to end. Music. Curtain.^ 

Certainly Mr. Fox Cooper was a bold man, even among 
adapters. 

CHAELES DICKENS 

THE YOUNGER. 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS 



CHARLES DICKENS. 



IN THEEE VOLUMES. 
VOL. I. 



LONDON 



CHAPMAN AND HALL, 193, PICCADILLY. 

MDCCCLXI. 



[The right of translation is reserved.] 



GREAT EXPECTATION'S. 



CHAPTER I. 

My father's family name being Pirrip, and my Christian name 
Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer 
or more explicit than Pip. So, I called myself Pip, and came to 
be called Pip. 

I give Pirrip as my father's family name, on the authority of 
his tombstone and my sister — Mrs. Joe Gargery, who married the 
blacksmith. As I never saw my father or my mother, and never 
saw any likeness of either of them (for their days were long before 
the days of photogi^aphs), my first fancies regarding what they were 
like, were unreasonably derived from their tombstones. The shape 
of the letters on my father's gave me an odd idea that he was a 
square, stout, dark man, with curly black hair. From the character 
and turn of the inscription, ^^ Also Georgiana Wife of the Ahove,^^ 
I drew a childish conclusion that my mother was freckled and sickly. 
To five little stone lozenges, each about a foot and a half long, 
which were arranged in a neat row beside their grave, and were 
sacred to the memory of five little brothers of mine — who gave 
up trying to get a living exceedingly early in that universal strug- 
gle — I am indebted for a belief I religiously entertained that they 
had all been born on their backs with their hands in their trousers- 
pockets, and had never taken them out in this state of existence. 

Ours was the marsh country, down by the river, within, as the 
river wound, twenty miles of the sea. My first most vivid and 
broad impression of the identity of things, seems to me to have 
been gained on a memorable raw afternoon towards evening. At 
such a time I found out for certain, that this bleak place overgrown 
with nettles was the churchyard ; and that Philip Pirrip, late of 
this parish, and also Georgiana wife of the above, were dead and 
buried; and that Alexander, Bartholomew, Abraham, Tobias, and 
Roger, infant children of the aforesaid, were also dead and buried ; 
and that the dark flat wilderness beyond the churchyard, intersected 



2 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

with dykes and mounds and gates, with scattered cattle feeding on 
it, was the marshes ; and that the low leaden line beyond was the 
river ; and that the distant savage lair from which the wind was 
rushing, was the sea ; and that the small bundle of shivers grow- 
ing afraid of it all and beginning to cr}^, Avas Pip. 

" Hold your noise ! " cried a terrible voice, as a man started up 
from among the graves at the side of the church porch. " Keep 
still, you little devil, or I'll cut your throat ! " 

A fearful man, all in coarse grey, with a great iron on his leg. 
A man with no hat, and with broken shoes, and with an old rag 
tied round his head. A man who had been soaked in water, and 
smothered in mud, and lamed by stones, and cut by flints, and 
stung by nettles, and torn by briars ; who limped, and shivered, 
and glared and growled ; and whose teeth chattered in his head as 
he seized me by the chin. 

"0! Don't cut my throat, sir," I pleaded in terror. "Pray 
don't do it, sir." 

" TeU us your name ! " said the man. " Quick ! " 

" Pip, sir." 

" Once more," said the man, staring at me. " Give it mouth ! " 

" Pip. Pip, sir." 

" Show us where you live," said the man, " Pint out the place ! " 

I pointed to where our \dllage lay, on the flat in-shore among the 
alder-trees and pollards, a mile or more from the church. 

The man, after looking at me for a moment, turned me upside 
down, and emptied my pockets. There was nothing in them but 
a piece of bread. When the church came to itself — for he was so 
sudden and strong that he made it go head over heels before me, 
and I saw the steeple under my feet — when the church came to 
itself, I say, I was seated on a high tombstone, trembling, while he 
ate the bread ravenously. 

"You young dog," said the man, licking his lips, " what fat cheeks 
you ha' got." 

I believe they were fat, though I was at that time undersized, 
for my years, and not strong. 

"Darn Me if I couldn't eat 'em," said the man, with a threaten- 
ing shake of his head, " and if I han't half a mind to't ! " 

I earnestly expressed my hope that he wouldn't, and held tighter 
to the tombstone on which he had put me ; partly, to keep myself 
upon it ; partly, to keep myself from crying. 

" Now lookee here ! " said the man. " Where's your mother? " 

" There, sir ! " said I. 

He started, made a short run, and stopped and looked over his 
shoulder. 



4 GREAT EXPECTATION^. 

"There, sir!" I timidly explained. "Also Georgiana. That's 
my mother." 

" Oh ! " said he, coming back. "And is that your father alonger 
your mother ? " 

"Yes, sir," said I; "him too; late of this parish." 

"Ha!" he muttered then, considering. "Who d'ye live with 
— supposin' you're kindly let to live, which I han't made up my 
mind about 1 " 

" My sister, sir — Mrs. Joe Gargerj^ — wife of Joe Gargery, the 
blacksmith, sir." 

" Blacksmith, eh 1 " said he. And looked dovm. at his leg. 

After darkly looking at his leg and at me several times, he came 
closer to my tombstone, took me by both arms, and tilted me back 
as far as he could hold me ; so that his eyes looked most powerfully 
dowTi into mine, and mine looked most helplessly up into his. 

"Now lookee here," he said, "the question being whether you're 
to be let to live. You know what a file is ? " 

"Yes, sir." 

" And you know what wittles is ? " 

" Yes, sir." 

After each question he tilted me over a little more, so as to give 
me a greater sense of helplessness and danger. 

" You get me a file." He tilted me again. "And you get me 
wittles," He tilted me again. "You bring 'em both to me." 
He tilted me again. " Or I'll have your heart and liver out." He 
tilted me again. 

I was dreadfully frightened, and so giddy that I clung to him 
with both hands, and said, "If you would kindly please to let me 
keep upright, sir, perhaps I shouldn't be sick, and perhaps I could 
attend more." 

He gave me a most tremendous dip and roll, so that the church 
jumped over its own weather-cock. Then, he held me by the arms 
in an upright position on the top of the stone, and went on in these 
fearful terms : 

"You bring me, to-morrow morning early, that file and them 
wittles. You bring the lot to me, at that old Battery over yonder. 
You do it, and you never dare to say a word or dare to make a sign 
concerning your having seen such a person as me, or any person sum- 
ever, and you shall be let to live. You fail, or you go from my words 
in any partickler, no matter how small it is, and your heart and 
your liver shall be tore out, roasted and ate. Now, I ain't alone, 
as you may think I am. There's a young man hid with me, in 
comparison with which young man I am a Angel. That young 
man hears the words I speak. That young man has a secret way 



QREAT EXPECTATIONS. 5 

pecooliar to himself, of getting at a boy, and at his heart, and at 
his liver. It is in wain for a boy to attempt to hide himself from 
that young man. A boy may lock his door, may be warm in bed, 
may tuck himself up, may draw the clothes over his head, may 
think himself comfortable and safe, but that young man will softly 
creep and creep his way to him and tear him open. I am a keep- 
ing that young man from harming of you at the present moment, 
with great difficulty. I tind it wery hard to hold that young man 
oft' of your inside. Now, what do you say ? " 

I said that I would get him the file, and I would get him what 
broken bits of food I could, and I would come to him at the Bat- 
tery, early in the morning. 

" Say, Lord strike you dead if you don't ! " said the man. 

I said so, and he took me down. 

"Now," he pursued, "you remember what you've undertook, 
and you remember that young man, and you get home ! " 

"Goo-good night, sir," I faltered. 

"Much of that ! " said he, glancing about him over the cold wet 
flat. " I wish I was a frog. Or a eel ! " 

At the same time, he hugged his shuddering body in both his 
arms — clasping himself, as if to hold himself together — and limped 
towards the low church wall. As I saw him go, picking his way 
among the nettles, and among the brambles that bound the green 
mounds, he looked in my young eyes as if he were eluding the 
hands of the dead people, stretching up cautiously out of their 
graves, to get a twist upon his ankle and pull him in. 

When he came to the low church wall, he got over it, like a man 
whose legs were numbed and stiff", and then turned round to look 
for me. When I saw him turning, I set my face towards home, 
and made the best use of my legs. But presently I looked over 
my shoulder, and saw him going on again towards the river, still 
hugging himself in both arms, and picking his way with his sore 
feet among the great stones dropped into the marshes here and 
there, for stepping-places when the rains were heavy, or the tide 
was in. 

The marshes were just a long black horizontal line then, as I 
stopped to look after him ; and the river was just another horizon- 
tal line, not nearly so broad nor yet so black ; and the sky was just 
a row of long angry red lines and dense black lines intermixed. On 
the edge of the river I could faintly make out the only two black 
things in all the prospect that seemed to be standing upright ; one 
of these was the beacon by which the sailors steered — like an un- 
hooped cask upon a pole — an ugly thing when you were near it ; 
the other a gibbet, with some chains hanging to it which had once 



6 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

held a pirate. The man was limping on towards this latter, as if 
he were the pirate come to life, and come down, and going back to 
hook himself up again. It gave me a terrible turn when I thought 
so ; and as I saw the cattle lifting their heads to gaze after him, I 
wondered whether they thought so too. I looked all round for the 
horrible young man, and could see no signs of him. But now I was 
frightened again, and ran home without stopping. 



CHAPTER II. 

My sister, Mrs. Joe Gargery, was more than twenty years older 
than I, and had established a great reputation with herself and the 
neighbours because she had brought me up " by hand." Having 
at that time to find out for myself what the expression meant, and 
knowing her to have a hard and heavy hand, and to be much in the 
habit of laying it upon her husband as well as upon me, I supposed 
that Joe Gargery and I were both brought up by hand. 

She was not a good-looking woman, my sister ; and I had a gen- 
eral impression that she must have made Joe Gargery marry her by 
hand. Joe was a fair man, with curls of flaxen hair on each side of 
his smooth face, and with eyes of such a very undecided blue that 
they seemed to have somehow got mixed with their own whites. 
He was a mild, good-natured, sweet-tempered, easy-going, foolish, 
dear fellow — a sort of Hercules in strength, and also in weakness. 

My sister, Mrs. Joe, with black hair and eyes, had such a pre- 
vailing redness of skin, that I sometimes used to wonder whether 
it was possible she washed herself with a nutmeg-grater instead of 
soap. She was tall and bony, and almost always wore a coarse 
apron, fastened over her figure behind with two loops, and having 
a square impregnable bib in front, that was stuck full of pins and 
needles. She made it a powerful merit in herself, and a strong 
reproach against Joe, tliat she wore this apron so much. Though 
I really see no reason why she should have worn it at all : or why, 
if she did wear it at all, she should not have taken it off every day 
of her life. 

Joe's forge adjoined our house, which was a wooden house, as 
many of the dwellings in our country were — most of them, at 
that time. When I ran home from the churchyard, the forge was 
shut up, and Joe was sitting alone in the kitchen. Joe and I being 
fellow-suff'erers, and having confidences as such, Joe imparted a con- 
fidence to me, the moment I raised the latch of the door and peeped 
in at him opposite to it, sitting in the chimney corner. 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 7 

"Mrs. Joe has been out a dozen times, looking for you, Pip. 
And she's out now, making it a baker's dozen." 

"Is she?" 

"Yes, Pip," said Joe; "and what's worse, she's got Tickler 
with her." 

At this dismal intelligence, I twisted the only button on my 
waistcoat round and round, and looked in great depression at the 
fire. Tickler was a wax-ended piece of cane, worn smooth by col- 
lision with my tickled frame. 

"She sot down," said Joe, "and she got up, and she made a 
grab at Tickler, , and she Ram-paged out. That's w^hat she did," 
said Joe, slowly clearing the fire between the lower bars with the 
poker, and looking at it : "she Ram-paged out, Pip." 

" Has she been gone long, Joe?" I always treated him as a larger 
species of child, and as no more than my equal. 

"Well," said Joe, glancing up at the Dutch clock, "she's been 
on the Ram -page, this last spell, about fi.ve minutes, Pip. She's 
a coming ! Get behind the door, old chap, and have the jack-towel 
betwixt you." 

I took the advice. My sister, Mrs. Joe, throwing the door wide 
open, and finding an obstruction behind it, immediately divined the 
cause, and applied Tickler to its further investigation. She con- 
cluded by throwing me — I often served as a connubial missile — 
at Joe, who, glad to get hold of me on any terms, passed me on 
into the chimney and quietly fenced me up there with his great 
leg. 

" Where have you been, you young monkey ? " said Mrs. Joe, 
stamping her foot. " Tell me directly what you've been doing to 
wear me away with fret and fright and worrit, or I'd have you out 
of that corner if you was fifty Pips, and he was five hundred 
Gargerys." 

"I have only been to the churchyard," said I, from my stool, 
crying and rubbing myself. 

" Churchyard ! " repeated my sister. " If it warn't for me you'd 
have been to the churchyard long ago, and stayed there. Who 
brought you up by hand ? " 

"You did," said I. 

" And why did I do it, I should like to know ? " exclaimed my 
sister. 

I whimpered, " I don't know." 

"/ don't ! " said my sister. " I'd never do it again ! I know that. 
I may truly say I've never had this apron of mine off, since born 
you were. It's bad enough to be a blacksmith's wife, and him a 
Gargery, without being your mother." 



8 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

My thoughts strayed from that question as I looked disconso- 
lately at the fire. For, the fugitive out on the marshes with the 
ironed leg, the mysterious young man, the file, the food, and the 
dreadful pledge I was under to commit a larceny on those shelter- 
ing premises, rose before me in the avenging coals. 

"■ Hah ! " said Mrs. Joe, restoring Tickler to his station. 
"Churchyard, indeed! You may well say churchyard, you two." 
One of us, by-the-bye, had not said it at all. "You'll drive me to the 
churchyard betwixt you, one of these days, and oh, a pr-r-recious 
pair you'd be without me ! " 

As she applied herself to set the tea-things, Joe peeped down at 
me over his leg, as if he were mentally casting me and himself 
up, and calculating what kind of pair we practically should make, 
under the grievous circumstances foreshadowed. After that, he sat 
feeling his right-side flaxen curls and whisker, and following Mrs. 
Joe about with his blue eyes, as his manner always was at squally 
times. 

My sister had a trenchant way of cutting our bread-and-butter 
for us, that never varied. First, with her left hand she jammed 
the loaf hard and fast against her bib — where it sometimes got a 
pin into it, and sometimes a needle, which we afterwards got into 
our mouths. Then she took some butter (not too much) on a knife 
and spread it on the loaf, in an apothecary kind of way, as if she 
were making a plaister — using both sides of the knife with a 
slapping dexterity, and trimming and moulding the butter off 
^und the crust. Then, she gave the knife a final smart wipe on 
the edge of the plaister, and then sawed a very thick round off the 
loaf : which she finally, before -separating from the loaf, hewed into 
two halves, of which Joe got one, and I the other. 

On the present occasion, though I was hungry, I dared not eat 
my slice. I felt that I must have something in reserve for my 
dreadful acquaintance, and his ally the still more dreadful young 
man. I knew Mrs. Joe's housekeeping to be of the strictest kind, 
and that my larcenous researches might find nothing available in 
the safe. Therefore I resolved to put my hunk of bread-and-butter 
down the leg of my trousers. 

The effort of resolution necessary to the achievement of this 
purpose, I found to be quite awful. It was as if I had to make 
up my mind to leap from the top of a high house, or plunge into a 
great depth of water. And it was made the more difficult by the 
unconscious Joe. In our already-mentioned freemasonry as fellow- 
sufferers, and in his good-natured companionship with me, it was 
our evening habit to compare the way we bit through our slices, 
by silently holding them up to each other's admiration now and 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 9 

then — which stimulated us to new exertions. To-night, Joe 
several times invited me, by the display of his fast-diminishing 
slice, to enter upon our usual friendly competition ; but he found 
me, each time, with my yellow mug of tea on one knee, and my 
untouched bread-and-butter on the other. At last, I desperately 
considered that the thing I contemplated must be done, and that 
it had best be done in the least improbable manner consistent with 
the circumstances, I took advantage of a moment when Joe had 
just looked at me, and got my bread-and-butter down my leg. 

Joe was evidently made uncomfortable by what he supposed to 
be my loss of appetite, and took a thoughtful bite out of his slice, 
which he didn't seem to enjoy. He turned it about in his mouth 
much longer than usual, pondering over it a good deal, and after 
all gulped it down like a pill. He was about to take another bite, 
and had just got his head on one side for a good purchase on it, 
when his eye fell on me, and he saw that my bread-and-butter was 
gone. 

The wonder and consternation with which Joe stopped on the 
threshold of his bite and stared at me, were too evident to escape 
my sister's observation. 

" What's the matter now ? " said she, smartly, as she put do^vn 
her cup. 

" I say, you know ! " muttered Joe, shaking his head at me in a 
very serious remonstrance. " Pip, old chap ! You'll do yourself 
a mischief. It'll stick somewhere. You can't have chawed it, Pip." 

" What's the matter noiv ? " repeated my sister, more sharply* 
than before. 

" If you can cough any trifle on it up, Pip, I'd recommend you 
to do it,", said Joe, all aghast. "Manners is manners, but stiU 
your elth's your elth." 

By this time, my sister was quite desperate, so she pounced on 
Joe, and, taking him by the two whiskers, knocked his head for a 
little while against the wall behind him : while I sat in the corner, 
looking guiltily on, 

"Now, perhaps you'll mention what's the matter," said my 
sister, out of breath, "you staring great stuck pig." 

Joe looked at her in a helpless way ; then took a helpless bite, 
and looked at me again, 

"You know, Pip," said Joe, solemnly, mth his last bite in his 
cheek, and speaking in a confidential voice, as if we two were quite 
alone, " you and me is always friends, and I'd be the last to teU 
upon you, any time. But such a — " he moved his chair, and 
looked about the floor between us, and then again at me — " such 
a most uncommon bolt as that ! " 



10 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

" Been bolting his food, has he ? " cried my sister. 

"You know, old chap," said Joe, looking at me, and not at Mrs. 
Joe, with his bite still in liis cheek, "I Bolted, myself, when I 
was your age — frequent — and as a boy I've been among a many 
Bolters ; but I never see your bolting equal yet, Pip, and it's a 
mercy you ain't Bolted dead." 

My sister made a dive at me, and fished me up by the hair : 
saying nothing more than the awful words, " You come along and 
be dosed." 

Some medical beast had revived Tar-water in those days as a 
fine medicine, and Mrs. Joe always kept a supply of it in the 
cupboard ; having a belief in its virtues correspondent to its 
nastiness. At the best of times, so much of this elixir was admin- 
istered to me as a choice restorative, that I was conscious of going 
about, smelling like a new fence. On this particular evening, the 
urgency of my case demanded a pint of this mixture, which was 
poured down my throat, for my greater comfort, while Mrs. Joe 
held my head under her arm, as a boot would be held in a boot- 
jack. Joe got off with half a pint; but was made to swallow 
that (much to his disturbance, as he sat slowly munching and 
meditating before the fire), "because he had had a turn." Judg- 
ing from myself, I should say he certainly had a turn afterwards, 
if he had had none before. 

Conscience is a dreadful thing when it accuses man or boy ; but 
when, in the case of a boy, that secret burden co-operates with 
another secret burden down the leg of his trousers, it is (as I can 
testify) a great punishment. The guilty knowledge that I was 
going to rob Mrs. Joe — I never thought I was going to rob Joe, 
for I never thought of any of the housekeeping property as his — 
united to the necessity of always keeping one hand on my bread- 
and-butter as I sat, or when I was ordered about the kitchen on 
any small errand, almost drove me out of my mind. Then, as the 
marsh winds made the fire glow and flare, I thought I heard the 
voice outside, of the man with the iron on his leg who had sworn 
me to secrecy, declaring that he couldn't and wouldn't starve until 
to-morrow, but must be fed now. At other times, I thought, What 
if the young man who was with so much difficulty restrained from 
imbruing his hands in me, should yield to a constitutional impa- 
tience, or should mistake the time, and should think himself accred- 
ited to my heart and liver to-night, instead of to-morrow ! If ever 
anybody's hair stood on end with terror, mine must have done so 
then. But, perhaps, nobody's ever did ? 

It was Christmas Eve, and I had to stir the pudding for next 
day, with a copper-stick, from seven to eight by the Dutch clock. 



GEEAT EXPECTATIONS. 11 

I tried it with the load upon my leg (and that made me think 
afresh of the man with the load on his leg), and found the tendency 
of exercise to bring the bread-and-butter out at my ankle, quite 
unmanageable. Happily I slipped away, and deposited that part 
of my conscience in my garret bedroom. 

" Hark ! " said I, when I had done my stirring, and was taking 
a final warm in the chimney corner before being sent up to bed ; 
"was that great guns, Joe 1 " 

" Ah ! " said Joe. " There's another conwict off." 

" What does that mean, Joe ? " said I. 

Mrs. Joe, who always took explanations upon herself, said 
snappishly, "Escaped. Escaped." Administering the definition 
like Tar-water. 

While Mrs. Joe sat with her head bending over her needlework, 
I put my mouth into the forms of sajdng to Joe, " What's a con- 
vict 1 " Joe put his mouth into the forms of returning such a 
highly elaborate answer, that I coidd make out nothing of it but 
the single word, "Pip." 

"There was a conwict off last night," said Joe, aloud, "after 
sunset-gun. And they fired warning of him. And now it appears 
they're firing warning of another." 

" TFAo's firing?" said I. 

" Drat that boy," interposed my sister, frowning at me over her 
work, " what a questioner he is. Ask no questions, and you'll be 
told no Hes." 

It was not very polite to herself, I thought, to imply that I 
should be told lies by her, even if I did ask questions. But she 
never was polite, unless there was company. 

At this point, Joe gi'eatly augmented my curiosity by taking 
the utmost pains to open his mouth very wide, and to put it into 
the form of a word that looked to me like "sulks." Therefore, I 
naturally pointed to Mrs. Joe, and put my mouth into the form of 
saying "her?" But Joe wouldn't hear of that at all, and again 
opened his mouth very wide, and shook the form of a most 
emphatic word out of it. But I could make nothing of the word. 

"Mrs. Joe," said I, as a last resort, "I should like to know — - 
if you woiddn't much mind — where the firing comes from 1 " 

" Lord bless the boy ! " exclaimed my sister, as if she didn't 
quite mean that, but rather the contrary. "From the Hulks!" 

" Oh-h ! " said I, looking at Joe. " Hulks ! " 

Joe gave a reproachful cough, as much as to say, " Well, I told 
you so." 

"And please what's Hulks ? " said I. 

" That's the way with this boy ! " exclaimed my sister, pointing 



12 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

me out with her needle and thread, and shaking her head at me. 
'' Answer him one question, and he'll ask you a dozen directly. 
Hulks are prison-ships, right 'cross th' meshes." We always used 
that name for marshes in our country. 

"I wonder who's put into prison-ships, and why they're put 
there 1 " said I, in a general way, and with quiet desperation. 

It was too much for Mrs. Joe, who immediately rose. " I tell 
you what, young fellow," said she, "I didn't bring you up by hand 
to badger people's Kves out. It would be blame to me, and not 
praise, if I had. People are put in the Hulks because they 
murder, and because they rob, and forge, and do all sorts of bad ; 
and thev always begin by asking questions. Now, you get along 
to bed!" 

I was never allowed a candle to light me to bed, and, as I went 
upstairs in the dark, with my head tingling — from Mrs, Joe's 
thimble having played the tambourine upon it, to accompany her 
last words — I felt fearfully sensible of the great convenience that 
the hulks were handy for me. I was clearly on my way there. I 
had begun by asking questions, and I was going to rob Mrs. Joe. 

Since that time, which is far enough away now, I have often 
thought that few people know what secrecy there is in the young, 
under terror. No matter how unreasonable the terror, so that it 
be terror. I was in mortal terror of the young man who wanted 
my heart and liver; I was in mortal terror of my interlocutor 
with the iron leg ; I was in mortal terror of myself, from whom an 
awful promise had been extracted ; I had no hope of deliverance 
through my all-powerful sister, who repulsed me at every turn ; I 
am afraid to think of what I might have done on requirement, in 
the secrecy of my terror. 

If I slept at all that night, it was only to imagine myself 
drifting down the river on a strong spring-tide, to the Hulks ; a 
ghostly pirate calling out to me through a speaking-trumpet, as I 
passed the gibbet-station, that I had better come ashore and be 
hanged there at once, and not put it off. I was afraid to sleep, 
even if I had been inclined, for I knew that at the first faint dawn 
of morning I must rob the pantry. There was no doing it in the 
night, for there was no getting a light by easy friction then ; to 
have got one, I must have struck it out of flint and steel, and have 
made a noise like the very pirate himself rattling his chains. 

As soon as the great black velvet pall outside my little window 
was shot with grey, I got up and went downstairs ; every board 
upon the way, and every crack in every board, calling after me, 
"Stop thief! "and "Get up, Mrs. Joe!" In the pantry, which 
was far more abundantly supplied than usual, owing to the sea- 



GKEAT EXPECTATIONS. 13 

son, I was very much alarmed, by a hare hanging up by the heels, 
whom I rather thought I caught, when my back was half turned, 
winking. I had no time for verification, no time for selection, no 
time for anything, for I had no time to spare. I stole some bread, 
some rind of cheese, about half a jar of mincemeat (which I tied 
up in my pocket-handkerchief with my last night's slice), some 
brandy from a stone bottle (which I decanted into a glass bottle 
I had secretly used for making, that intoxicating-fluid, Spanish- 
liquorice-water, up in my room ; diluting the stone bottle from a 
jug in the kitchen cupboard), a meat bone with very little on it, 
and a beautiful round compact pork pie. I was nearly going away 
without the pie, but I was tempted to mount upon a shelf, to look 
what it was that was put away so carefully in a covered earthen- 
ware dish in a corner, and I found it was the pie, and I took it, in 
the hope that it was not intended for early use, and would not be 
missed for some time. 

There was a door in the kitchen communicating with the forge ; 
I unlocked and unbolted that door, and got a file from among Joe's 
tools. Then I put the fastenings as I had found them, opened the 
door at which I had entered when I ran home last night, shut it, 
and ran for the misty marshes. 



CHAPTER III. 

It was a rimy morning, and very damp. I had seen the damp 
lying on the outside of my little window, as if some goblin had 
been crying there all night, and using the window for a pocket- 
handkerchief. Now I saw the damp lying on the bare hedges and 
spare grass, like a coarser sort of spiders' webs ; hanging itself from 
twig to twig and blade to blade. On every rail and gate, wet lay 
clammy, and the marsh-mist was so thick, that the wooden finger 
on the post directing people to our village — a direction which 
they never accepted, for they never came there — was invisible to 
me until I was quite close under it. Then, as I looked up at it, 
while it dripped, it seemed to my oppressed conscience like a phan- 
tom devoting me to the Hulks. 

The mist was heavier yet when I got out upon the marshes, so 
that instead of my running at everything, everything seemed to 
run at me. This was very disagreeable to a guilty mind. The 
gates and dykes and banks came bursting at me through the mist, 
as if they cried as plainly as could be, "A boy with Somebody- 
else's pork pie ! Stop him ! " The cattle came upon me with 



14 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

like suddenness, staring out of their eyes, and steaming out of their 
nostrils, "Holloa, young thief!" One black ox, with a white 
cravat on — who even had to my awakened conscience something 
of a clerical air — fixed me so obstinately with his eyes, and moved 
his blunt head round in such an accusatory manner as I moved 
round, that I blubbered out to him, " I couldn't help it, sir ! It 
wasn't for myself I took it ! " Upon which he put down his head, 
blew a cloud of smoke out of his nose, and vanished with a kick- 
up of his hind-legs and a flourish of his tail. 

All this time I was getting on towards the river ; but however 
fast I went, I couldn't warm my feet, to which the damp cold 
seemed riveted, as the iron was riveted to the leg of the man I 
was running to meet. I knew my way to the Battery, pretty 
straight, for I had been down there on a Sunday with Joe, and 
Joe, sitting on an old gun, had told me that when I was 'prentice 
to him, regularly bound, we would have such Larks there ! How- 
ever, in the confusion of the mist, I found myself at last too far to 
the right, and consequently had to try back along the river-side, 
on the bank of loose stones above the mud and the stakes that 
staked the tide out. Making my way along here with all dispatch, 
I had just crossed a ditch which I knew to be very near the Bat- 
tery, and had just scrambled up the mound beyond the ditch, 
when I saw the man sitting before me. His back was towards me, 
and he had his arms folded, and was nodding forward, heavy with 
sleep. 

I thought he would be more glad if I came upon him with his 
breakfast, in that unexpected manner, so I went forward softly 
and touched him on the shoulder. He instantly jumped up, and 
it was not the same man, but another man ! 

And yet this man was dressed in coarse grey, too, and had a 
great iron on his leg, and was lame, and hoarse, and cold, and was 
everything that the other man was'; except that he had not the same 
face, and had a flat, broad-brimmed, low-crowned felt hat on. 
All this I saw in a moment, for I had only a moment to see it in : 
he swore an oath at me, made a hit at me — it was a round, weak 
blow that missed me and almost knocked himself down, for it 
made him stumble — and then he ran into the mist, stumbling 
twice as he went, and I lost him. 

" It's the young man ! " I thought, feeling my heart shoot as I 
identified him. I dare say I should have felt a pain in my liver, 
too, if I had known where it was. 

I was soon at the Battery, after that, and there was the right 
man — hugging himself and limping to and fro, as if he had never 
all night left off hugging and limping — waiting for me. He was 



GKEAT EXPECTATIONS. 15 

awfully cold, to be sure. I half expected to see him drop down 
before my face and die of deadly cold. His eyes looked so awfully 
hungry, too, that when I handed him the file and he laid it down 
on the grass, it occurred to me he would have tried to eat it, if he 
had not seen my bundle. He did not turn me upside down, this 
time, to get at what I had, but left me right side upwards while I 
opened the bundle and emptied my pockets. 

" What's in the bottle, boy 1 " said he. 

"Brandy," said I. 

He was already handing mincemeat down his throat in the most 
curious manner — more like a man who was putting it away some- 
where in a violent hurry, than a man who was eating it — but he 
left off to take some of the liquor. He shivered all the while so 
violently, that it was quite as much as he could do to keep the 
neck of the bottle between his teeth, without biting it off. 

"I think you have got the ague," said I. 

"I'm much of your opinion, boy," said he. 

"It's bad about here," I told him. "You've been lying out on 
the meshes, and they're dreadful aguish. Rheumatic too." 

" I'll eat my breakfast afore they're the death of me," said he. 
" I'd do that if I was going to be strung up to that there gallows 
as there is over there, directly arterwards. I'll beat the shivers so 
far, /'ll bet you." 

He was gobbling mincemeat, meat bone, bread, cheese, and pork 
pie, all at once : staring distrustfully while he did so at the mist 
all round us, and often stopping — even stopping his jaws — to 
listen. Some real or fancied sound, some clink upon the river or 
breathing of beast upon the marsh, now gave him a start, and he 
said, suddenly : 

" You're not a deceiving imp 1 You brought no one with you ? " 

" No, sir ! No ! " 

" Nor giv' no one the office to follow you 1 " 

"No!" 

"Well," said he, "I believe you. You'd be but a fierce young 
hound indeed, if at your time of life you could help to hunt a 
wretched warmint, hunted as near death and dunghill as this poor 
wretched warmint is ! " 

Something clicked in his throat as if he had works in him like a 
clock, and was goin^ to strike. And he smeared his ragged rough 
sleeve over his eyes. '' 

Pitying his desolation, and watching him as he gradually settled 
down upon the pie, I made bold to say, " I am glad you enjoy it." 

" Did you speak 1 " 

" I said, I was glad you enjoyed it." 



16 GREAT EXrEC TATIONS. 

"Thaukee, my boy. I do." 

I had ofteu watched a large dog of ours eating his food ; and I 
now noticed a decided simihirity between the dog's way of eating, 
and the man's. The man took strong sharp sudden bites, just like 
the dog. He swallowed, or rather snapjDed up, every mouthful, too 
soon and too fast ; and he looked sideways here and there while 
he ate, as if he thought there was danger in every dii-ection of 
somebody's coming to take the pie away. He was altogether too 
unsettled in his mind over it, to cippreciate it comfortably, I 
thought, or to have anybody to dine with him, without making a 
chop with his jaws at the visitor. In all of which particulars he 
was very like the dog. 

" I am afraid you won't leave any of it for him," said I, timidly ; 
after a silence during which I had hesitated as to the politeness of 
making the remark. "There's no more to be got where that 
came from." It was the certainty of this fact that impelled me to 
offer the hint. 

" Leave any for him 1 Who's him ? " said my friend, stopping in 
his crunching of pie-crust. 

"The young man. That you spoke of. That was hid ^^ith 
you." 

" Oh ah ! " he returned, with something like a gruff laugh. 
" Him ? Yes, yes 1 He don't want no wittles." 

" I thought he looked as if he did," said I. 

The man stopped eating, and regarded me with the keenest 
scrutiny and the greatest surprise. 

"Looked? When?" 

"Just now." 

"Where?" 

"Yonder," said I, pointing; "over there, where I found him 
nodding asleep, and thought it was you." 

He held me by the collar and stared at me so, that I began to 
think his first idea about cutting my throat had revived. 

"Dressed like you, you know, only with a hat," I explained, 
trembUng; "and — and" — I was very anxious to put this deli- 
cately — "and with — the same reason for wanting to borrow a 
file. Didn't you hear the cannon last night ? " 

" Then, there ivas fiiring I " he said to himself. 

" I wonder you shouldn't have been sure of that," I retui-ned, 
"for we heard it up at home, and that's further away, and we were 
shut in besides." 

"Why, see now!" said he. "When a man's alone on these 
flats, with a light head and a light stomach, perishing of cold and 
want, he hears nothin' all night, but guns firing, and voices calling. 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 17 

Hears ? He sees the soldiers, with their red coats lighted up 
by the torches carried afore, closing in round him. Hears his 
number called, hears himself challenged, hears the rattle of the 
muskets, hears the orders ' Make ready ! Present ! Cover him 
steady, men ! ' and is laid hands on — and there's nothin' ! Why, 
if I see one pursuing party last night — coming up in order, Damn 
'em, with their tramp, tramp — I see a hundred. And as to firing ! 
Why, I see the mist shake with the cannon, arter it was broad day. 
— But this man ; " he had said all the rest as if he had forgotten 
my being there ; " did you notice anything in him 1 " 

"He had a badly bruised face," said I, recalling what I hardly 
knew I knew. 

" Not here 1 " exclaimed the man, striking his left cheek merci- 
lessly, with the flat of his hand. 

" Yes, there ! " 

" Where is he ? " He crammed what little food was left, into 
the breast of his grey jacket. " Show me the way he went. I'll 
pull him down, like a bloodhound. Curse this iron on my sore 
leg ! Give us hold of the file, boy." 

I mdicated in what direction the mist had shrouded the other 
man, and he looked up at it for an instant. But he was down on 
the rank wet grass, filing at his iron like a madman, and not mind- 
ing me or minding his own leg, which had an old chafe upon it and 
was bloody, but which he handled as roughly as if it had no more 
feeling in it than the file. I was very much afraid of him again, 
now that he had worked himself into this fierce hurry, and I was 
likewise very much afraid of keeping away from home any longer. 
I told him I must go, but he took no notice, so I thought the best 
thing I could do was to slip off". The last I saw of him, his head 
was bent over his knee and he was working hard at his fetter, nuit- 
tering impatient imprecations at it and his leg. The last I heard 
of him, I stopped in the mist to listen, and the file was still going. 



CHAPTER IV. 

I FULLY expected to find a Constable in the kitchen, waiting to 
take me up. But not only was there no Constable there, but no 
discovery had yet been made of the robbery. Mrs. Joe was prodig- 
iously busy in getting the house ready for the festivities of the day, 
and Joe had been put upon the kitchen door-step to keep him out 
of the dust-pan — an article into which his destiny always led him, 



18 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

sooner or later, when my sister was vigorously reaping the floors of 
her establishment. 

" And where the deuce ha' you been % " was Mrs. Joe's Christ- 
mas salutation, when I and my conscience showed ourselves. 

I said I had been down to hear the Carols. " Ah ! well ! " 
observed Mrs. Joe. "You might ha' done worse." Not a doubt 
of that I thought. 

" Perhaps if I warn't a blacksmith's wife, and (what's the same 
thing) a slave with her apron never off, / should have been to hear 
the Carols," said Mrs. Joe. "I'm rather partial to Carols myself, 
and that's the best of reasons for my never hearing any." 

Joe, who had ventured into the kitchen after me as the dust-pan 
had retired before us, drew the back of his hand across his nose 
with a conciliatory air, when Mrs. Joe darted a look at him, and, 
when her eyes were withdrawn, secretly crossed his two forefingers, 
and exhibited them to me, as our token that Mrs. Joe was in a 
cross temper. This was so much her normal state, that Joe and I 
would often, for weeks together, be, as to our fingers, like monu- 
mental Crusaders as to their legs. 

We were to have a superb dinner, consisting of a leg of pickled 
pork and greens, and a pair of roast stuffed fowls. A handsome 
mince-pie had been made yesterday morning (which accounted for 
the mincemeat not being missed), and the pudding was already on 
the boil. These extensive arrangements occasioned us to be cut off 
unceremoniously in respect of breakfast; "for I ain't," said Mrs. 
Joe, " I ain't a going to have no formal cramming and busting and 
washing up now, with what I've got before me, I promise you ! " 

So, we had our slices served out, as if we were two thousand 
troops on a forced march instead of a man and boy at home ; and 
we took gulps of milk and water, with apologetic countenances, 
from a jug on the dresser. In the meantime, Mrs. Joe put clean 
white curtains up, and tacked a new flowered-flounce across the 
wide chimney to replace the old one, and uncovered the little state 
parlour across the passage, which was never uncovered at any other 
time, but passed the rest of the year in a cool haze of silver paper, 
which even extended to the four little white crockery poodles on 
the mantelshelf, each with a black nose and a basket of flowers in 
his mouth, and each the counterpart of the other. Mrs. Joe was 
a very clean housekeeper, but had an exquisite art of making her 
cleanliness more uncomfortable and unacceptable than dirt itself. 
Cleanhness is next to Godliness, and some people do the same by 
their religion. 

My sister having so much to do, was going to church vicariously ; 
that is to say, Joe and I were going. In his working clothes, Joe 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 19 

was a ■well-knit cliaracteristic-lookiug blacksmith; in his holiday 
clothes, he was more like a scarecrow in good circumstances, than 
anything else. Nothing that he wore then, fitted him or seemed 
to belong to him ; and everything that he wore then, grazed him. 
On the present festive occasion he emerged from his room, when 
the bhthe bells were going, the picture of miseiy, in a full suit of 
Sunday penitentials. As to me, I think my sister must have had 
some general idea that I was a young offender whom an Accoucheur 
Policeman had taken up (on my birthday) and delivered over to 
her, to be dealt with according to the outraged majesty of the law. 
I was always treated as if I had insisted on being born in opposi- 
tion to the dictates of reason, religion, and morality, and against 
the dissuading arguments of my best friends. Even when I was 
taken to have a new suit of clothes, the tailor had orders to make 
them like a kind of Reformatory, and on no account to let me have 
the free use of my limbs. 

Joe and I going to church, therefore, must have been a moving 
spectacle for compassionate minds. Yet, what I suffered outside, 
was nothing to what I underwent within. The terrors that had 
assailed me whenever Mrs. Joe had gone near the pantry, or out of 
the room, were only to be equalled by the remorse with which my 
mind dwelt on what my hands had done. Under the weight of 
my wdcked secret, I pondered whether the Church would be power- 
ful enough to shield me from the vengeance of the terrible young 
man, if I divulged to that establishment. I conceived the idea 
that the time when the banns were read and when the clergyman 
said, "Ye are now to declare it!" would be the time for me to 
rise and propose a private conference in the vestry. I am far from 
being sure that I might not have astonished our small congrega- 
tion by resorting to this extreme measure, but for its being Christ- 
mas Day and no Sunday. 

Mr. Wopsle, the clerk at church, was to dine with us ; and Mr. 
Hubble, the wheelwright, and Mrs. Hubble; and Uncle Pumble- 
chook (Joe's uncle, but Mrs. Joe appropriated him), who was a 
well-to-do cornchandler in the nearest town, and drove his own 
chaise-cart. The dinner hour was half-past one. When Joe and 
I got home, we found the table laid, and Mrs. Joe dressed, and 
the dinner dressing, and the front door unlocked (it never was at 
any other time) for the company to enter by, and everything most 
splendid. And still, not a word of the robbery. 

The time came, without bringing with it any relief to my feel- 
ings, and the company came. Mr. Wopsle, united to a Roman 
nose and a large shining bald forehead, had a deep voice which he 
was uncommonly proud of; indeed it was understood among his 



20 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

acquaintance that if you could only give him his head, he would 
read the clergyman into fits ; he himself confessed that if the 
Church was "thrown open," meaning to competition, he would not 
despair of making his mark in it. The Church not being "thrown 
open," he was, as I have said, our clerk. But he punished the 
Aniens tremendously ; and when he gave out the psalm — always 
giving the whole verse — he looked all around the congregation 
first, as much as to say, "You have heard our friend overhead; 
oblige me with your opinion of this style ! " 

I opened the door to the company — making believe that it was 
a habit of ours to open that door — and I opened it first to Mr. 
Wopsle, next to Mr. and Mrs. Hubble, and last of all to Uncle 
Pumblechook. N.B. / was not allowed to call him uncle, under 
the severest penalties. 

"Mrs. Joe," said Uncle Pumblechook; a large hard-breathing 
middle-aged slow man, with a mouth like a fish, dull staring eyes, 
and sandy hair standing upright on his head, so that he looked as 
if he had just been all but choked, and had that moment come to ; 
" I have brought you as the compliments of the season — I have 
brought you, Mum, a bottle of sherry wine — and I have brought 
you. Mum, a bottle of port wine." 

Every Christmas Day he presented himself, as a profound 
novelty, with exactly the same words, and carrying the two bottles 
like dumb-bells. Every Christmas Day, Mrs. Joe replied, as she 
now replied, " Oh, Un — cle Pum — ble — chook ! This is kind! " 
Every Christmas Day, he retorted, as he now retorted, " It's no 
more than your merits. And now are you all bobbish, and how's 
Sixpennorth of halfpence"?" meaning me. 

We dined on these occasions in the kitchen, and adjourned, for 
the nuts and oranges and apples, to the parlour ; which was a 
change very like Joe's change from his working clothes to his Sun- 
day dress. My sister was uncommonly lively on the present occa- 
sion, and indeed was generally more gracious in the society of Mrs. 
Hubble than in other company. I remember Mrs. Hubble as a 
little curly sharp-edged person in sky-blue, who held a convention- 
ally juvenile position, because she had married Mr. Hubble — I 
don't know at what remote period — when she was much younger 
than he. I remember Mr. Hubble as a tough high-shouldered 
stooping old man, of a sawdusty fragrance, with his legs extraor- 
dinarily wide apart : so that in my short days I always saw some 
miles of open country between them when I met him coming up 
the lane. 

Among this good company I should have felt myself, even if I 
hadn't robbed the pantry, in a false position. Not because I was 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 21 

squeezed in at an acute angle of the table-cloth, with the table in 
my chest, and the Pumblecliookian elbow in my eye, nor because 
I was not allowed to speak (I didn't want to speak), nor because 
I was regaled with the scaly tips of the drumsticks of the fowls, 
and with those obscure corners of pork of which the pig, when liv- 
ing, had had the least reason to be vain. No ; I should not have 
minded that if they would only have left me alone. But they 
wouldn't leave mc alone. They seemed to think the opportunity 
lost, if they failed to point the conversation at me, every now and 
then, and stick the point into me. I might have been an unfortu- 
nate little bull in a Spanish arena, I got so smartingly touched up 
by these moral goads. 

It began the moment we sat down to dinner. Mr. Wopsle said 
grace with theatrical declamation — as it now appears to me, some- 
thing like a religious cross of the Ghost in Hamlet with Richard 
the Third — and ended with the very proper aspiration that we 
might be truly grateful. Upon which my sister fixed me with her 
eye, and said, in a low reproachful voice, "Do you hear that? Be 
grateful." 

" Especially," said Mr. Pumblechook, " be grateful, boy, to them 
which brought you up by hand." 

Mrs. Hubble shook her head, and contemplating me with a 
mournful presentiment that I should come to no good, asked, 
"Why is it that the young are never grateful?" This moral 
mystery seemed too much for the company until Mr. Hubble tersely 
solved it by saying, "Naterally wicious." Everybody then mur- 
mured " True ! " and looked at me in a particularly unpleasant 
and personal manner. 

Joe's station and influence were something feebler (if possible) 
when there was company, than when there was none. But he 
always aided and comforted me when he could, in some way of his 
own, and he always did so at dinner-time by giving me gravy, if 
there were any. There being plenty of gravy to-day, Joe spooned 
into my plate, at this point, about half a pint. 

A little later on in the dinner, Mr. Wopsle reviewed the sermon 
with some severity, and intimated — in the usual hypothetical case 
of the Church being " thrown open " — what kind of sermon he 
would have given them. After favouring them with some heads 
of that discourse, he remarked that he considered the subject of 
the day's homily, ill-chosen; which was the less excusable, he 
added, when there were so many subjects "going about." 

"True again," said Uncle Pumblechook. "You've hit it, sir! 
Plenty of subjects going about, for them that know how to put 
salt upon their tails. That's what's wanted. A man needn't go 



22 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

far to find a subject, if he's ready with his salt-box." Mr. Pum- 
blechook added, after a short interval of reflection, "Look at Pork 
alone. There's a subject ! If you want a subject, look at Pork ! " 

"True, sir. Many a moral for the young," returned Mr. 
Wopsle ; and I knew he was going to lug me in, before he said 
it ; " might be deduced from that text." 

(" You listen to this," said my sister to me, in a severe parenthesis.) 

Joe gave me some more gravy. 

"Swine," pursued Mr. Wopsle, in his deepest voice, and point- 
ing his fork at my blushes, as if he were mentioning my Christian 
name ; " Swine were the companions of the prodigal. The glut- 
tony of Swine is put before us, as an example to the young." (I 
thought this pretty well in him who had been praising up the pork 
for being so plump and juicy.) "What is detestable in a pig, is 
more detestable in a boy." 

"Or girl," suggested Mr. Hubble. 

" Of course, or girl, Mr. Hubble," assented Mr. Wopsle, rather 
irritably, "but there is no girl present." 

"Besides," said Mr. Pumblechook, turning sharp on me, "think 
what you've got to be grateful for. If you'd been born a 
Squeaker " 

" He was, if ever a child was," said my sister, most emphatically. 

Joe gave me some more gravy. 

"Well, but I mean a four-footed Squeaker," said Mr. Pumble- 
chook. "If you had been born such, would you have been here 
now ? Not you " 

"Unless in that form," said Mr. Wopsle, nodding towards the 
dish. 

"' But I don't mean in that form, sir," returned Mr. Pumble- 
chook, who had an objection to being interrupted ; "I mean, 
enjoying himself Avith his elders and betters, and improving himself 
with their conversation, and rolling in the lap of luxury. Would 
he have been doing that? No, he wouldn't. And what would 
have been your destination?" turning on me again. "You 
would have been disposed of for so many shillings according to the 
market price of the article, and Dunstable the butcher would have 
come up to you as you lay in your straw, and he would have 
whipped you under his left arm, and with his right he would 
have tucked up his frock to get a penknife from out of his waist- 
coat-pocket, and he would have shed your blood and had your life. 
No bringing up by hand then. Not a bit of it ! " 

Joe offered me more gravy, which I was afraid to take. 

" He was a world of trouble to you, ma'am," said Mrs. Hubble, 
commiserating my sister. 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 23 

" Trouble 1 " eclioed my sister, " trouble ? " And then entered 
on a fearful catalogue of all the illnesses I had been guilty of, and 
all the acts of sleeplessness I had committed, and all the high places 
I had tumbled from, and all the low places I had tumbled into, 
and all the injuries I had done myself, and all the times she had 
wished me in my grave, and I had contumaciously refused to go 
there. 

I think the Romans must have aggravated one another very 
much, with their noses. Perhaps, they became the restless people 
they were, in consequence. Anyhow, Mr. Wopsle's Roman nose so 
aggravated me, during the recital of my misdemeanours, that I 
should have liked to pull it until he howled. But, all I had 
endured up to this time, was nothing in comparison with the awful 
feelings that took possession of me when the pause was broken which 
ensued upon my sister's recital, and in which pause everybody had 
looked at me (as I felt painfully conscious) with indignation and 
abhorrence. 

"Yet," said Mr. Pumblechook, leading the company gently back 
to the theme from which they had strayed, "Pork — regarded as 
biled — is rich, too ; ain't it ? " 

" Have a little brandy, uncle," said my sister. 

Heavens, it had come at last ! He would find it was weak, 
he would say it was weak, and I was lost ! I held tight to the leg 
of the table, under the cloth, with both hands, and awaited my 
fate. 

My sister went for the stone bottle, came back with the stone 
bottle, and poured his brandy out : no one else taking any. The 
wretched man trifled with his glass — took it up, looked at it 
through the light, put it do^vn — prolonged my misery. All this 
time Mrs. Joe and Joe were briskly clearing the table for the pie 
and pudding. 

1 couldn't keep my eyes off him. Always holding tight by the 
leg of the table with my hands and feet, I saw the miserable creat- 
ure finger his glass playfully, take it up, smile, throw his head back, 
and drink the brandy off. Instantly afterwards, the company were 
seized with unspeakable consternation, owing to his springing to 
his feet, turning round several times in an appalling spasmodic 
whooping-cough dance, and rushing out at the door ; he then 
became visible through the window, violently plunging and expec- 
torating, making the most hideous faces, and apparently out of his 
mind. 

I held on tight, while Mrs. Joe and Joe ran to him. I didn't 
know how I had done it, but I had no doubt I had murdered him 
somehow. In my dreadful situation, it was a relief when he was 



24 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

brought back, and, surveyiug the company all roimd as if they had 
disagreed with him, sank down into his chair with the one signifi- 
cant gasp, " Tar ! " 

I had filled up the bottle from the tar- water jug. I knew he 
would be worse by-and-bye. I moved the table, like a Medium of 
the present day, by the vigour of my unseen hold upon it. 

" Tar ! " cried my sister, in amazement. " Why, how ever could 
Tar come there % " 

But, Uncle Pumbleehook, who was omnipotent in that kitchen, 
wouldn't hear the word, wouldn't hear of the subject, imperiously 
waved it all away with his hand, and asked for hot gin-and-water. 
My sister, who had began to be alarmingly meditative, had to em- 
ploy herself actively in getting the gin, the hot water, the sugar, 
and the lemon-peel, and mixing them. For the time at least, I 
was saved. I still held on to the leg of the table, but clutched it 
now with the fervour of gratitude. 

B}^ degrees, I became calm enough to release my grasp, and par- 
take of pudding. Mr. Pumbleehook partook of pudding. All 
partook of pudding. The course terminated, and Mr. Pumbleehook 
had begun to beam under the genial influence of gin-and-water. I 
began to think I should get over the day, when my sister said to 
Joe, " Clean plates — cold." 

I clutched the leg of the table again immediately, and pressed it 
to my bosom as if it had been the companion of my youth and 
friend of my soul. I foresaw what was coming, and I felt that 
this time I really was gone. 

"You must taste," said my sister, addi'essing the guests wth 
her best grace, "you must taste, to finish with, such a delightful 
and delicious present of Uncle Pumblechook's ! " 

Must they ! Let them not hope to taste it ! 

"You must know," said my sister, rising, "it's a pie; a savoury 
pork pie." 

The company mm mured their compliments. Uncle Pumble- 
ehook, sensible of having deserved well of his fellow-creatures, said 
— quite vivaciously, all things considered — " Well, Mrs. Joe, we'll 
do our best endeavours ; let us have a cut at this same pie." 

My sister went out to get it. I heard her steps proceed to the 
pantry. I saw Mr. Pumbleehook balance his knife. I saw re- 
awakening appetite in the Roman nostrils of Mr. Wopsle. I heard 
Mr. Hubble remark that " a bit of savoury pork pie would lay atop 
of anything you could mention, and do no harm," and I heard Joe 
say, "You shall have some, Pip." I have never been absolutely 
certain whether I uttered a shrill yell of terror, merely in spirit, or 
in the bodily hearing of the company. I felt that I could bear no 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 25 

more, and that I must run away. I released the leg of the table, 
and ran for my life. 

But I ran no further than the house door, for there I ran head 
foremost into a party of soldiers with their muskets : one of whom 
held out a pair of handcujffs to me, saying, "Here you are, look 
sharp, come on ! " 



CHAPTER V. 

The apparition of a file of soldiers ringing down the butt-ends 
of their loaded muskets on our door-step, caused the dinner-party 
to rise from the table in confusion, and caused Mrs. Joe, re-enter- 
ing the kitchen empty-handed, to stop short and stare, in her won- 
dering lament of " Gracious goodness gi'acious me, what's gone — 
with the — pie ! " 

The sergeant and I were in the kitchen when Mrs. Joe stood 
staring ; at which crisis I partially recovered the use of my senses. 
It was the sergeant who had spoken to me, and he was now look- 
ing round at the company, with his handcuffs invitingly extended 
towards them in his right hand, and his left on my shoulder. 

" Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen," said the sergeant, " but as 
I have mentioned at the door to this smart young shaver " (which 
he hadn't), " I am on a chase in the name of the king, and I want 
the blacksmith." 

" And pray, what might you want with him ? " retorted my sis- 
ter, quick to resent his being wanted at all. 

"Missis," returned the gallant sergeant, "speaking for myself, 
I should reply, the honour and pleasure of his fine wife's acquaint- 
ance ; speaking for the king, I answer, a little job done." 

This was received as rather neat in the sergeant ; insomuch that 
Mr. Pumblechook cried audibly, "Good again! " 

" You see, blacksmith," said the sergeant, who had by this time 
picked out Joe with his eye, " we have had an accident with these, 
and I find the lock of one of 'em goes wrong, and the coupling 
don't act pretty. As they are wanted, for immediate service, will 
you throw your eye over them ? " 

Joe threw his eye over them, and pronounced that the job would 
necessitate the lighting of his forge fire, and would take nearer two 
hours than one. "Will it? Then will you set about it at once, 
blacksmith?" said the ofi'-hand sergeant, "as it's on his Majesty's 
service. And if my men can bear a hand anywhere, they'll make 
themselves useful." With that he called to his men, who came 



26 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

trooping into the kitchen one after another, and piled their arms 
in a corner. And then they stood about, as soldiers do; now, 
with their hands loosely clasped before them ; now, resting a knee 
or a shoulder ; now, easing a belt or a pouch ; now, opening the 
door to spit stiffly over their high stocks, out into the yard. 

All these things I saw without then knowing that I saw them, 
for I was in an agony of apprehension. But, beginning to per- 
ceive that the handcuffs were not for me, and that the military had 
so far got the better of the pie as to put it in the background, I 
collected a little more of my scattered wits. 

" Would you give me the Time ! " said the sergeant, addressing 
himself to Mr. Pumblechook, as to a man whose appreciative 
powers justified the inference that he was equal to the time. 

" It's just gone half-past two." 

"That's not so bad," said the sergeant, reflecting; "even if I 
was forced to halt here nigh two hours, that'll do. How far might 
you call yourselves from the marshes, hereabouts ? Not above a 
mile, I reckon?" 

"Just a mile," said Mrs. Joe. 

" That'll do. We begin to close in upon 'em about dusk. A 
little before dusk, my orders are. That'll do." 

" Convicts, sergeant ? " asked Mr. Wopsle, in a matter-of-course 
way. 

"Ay!" returned the sergeant, "two. They're pretty well 
known to be out on the marshes still, and they won't try to get 
clear of 'em before dusk. Anybody here seen anything of any such 
game 1 " 

Everybody, myself excepted, said no, with confidence. Nobody 
thought of me. 

"Well," said the sergeant, "they'll find themselves trapped in 
a circle, I expect, sooner than they count on. Now, blacksmith ! 
If you're ready, his Majesty the King is." 

Joe had got his coat and waistcoat and cravat off, and his 
leather apron on, and passed into the forge. One of the soldiers 
opened its wooden windows, another lighted the fire, another 
turned to at the bellows, the rest stood round the blaze, which was 
soon roaring. Then Joe began to hammer and clink, hammer and 
clink, and we all looked on. 

The interest of the impending pursuit not only absorbed the 
general attention, but even made my sister liberal. She drew a 
pitcher of beer from the cask, for the soldiers, and invited the ser- 
geant to take a glass of brandy. But Mr. Pumblechook said 
sharpl}^, "Give him wine. Mum. I'll engage there's no Tar in 
that : " so, the sergeant thanked him and said that, as he preferred 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 27 

his drink without tar, he would take wine, if it was equally con- 
venient. When it was given him, he drank his Majesty's health 
and compliments of the season, and took it all at a mouthful and 
smacked his lips. 

" Good stuff, eh, sergeant ? " said Mr. Pumblechook. 

"Ill tell you something," returned the sergeant; "I suspect 
that stuff's oi your providing." 

Mr. Pumblechook, with a fat sort of laugh, said, " Ay, ay ? 
Why?" 

"Because," returned the sergeant, clapping him on the shoulder, 
"you're a man that knows what's what." 

"D'ye think so? " said Mr. Pumblechook, with his former laugh. 
" Have another glass ! " 

"With you. Hob and nob," returned the sergeant. "The top 
of mine to the foot of yours — the foot of yours to the top of mine 
— Pting once, ring twice — the best tune on the Musical Glasses ! 
Your health. May you live a thousand years, and never be a 
worse judge of the right sort than you are at the present moment 
of your life ! " 

The sergeant tossed off his glass again and seemed quite ready 
for another glass. I noticed that Mr. Pumblechook in his hospi- 
tality appeared to forget that he had made a present of the wine, 
but took the bottle from Mrs. Joe and had all the credit of hand- 
ing it about in a giish of joviality. Even I got some. And he 
was so very free of the wine that he even called for the other 
bottle, and handed that about with the same liberality, when the 
first was gone. 

As I watched them while they all stood clustering about the 
forge, enjoying themselves so much, I thought what terrible good 
sauce for a dinner my fugitive friend on the marshes was. They 
had not enjoyed themselves a quarter so much, before the enter- 
tainment was brightened with the excitement he furnished. And 
now, when they were all in lively anticipation of " the two vil- 
lains " being taken, and when the bellows seemed to roar for the 
fugitives, the fire to flare for them, the smoke to huriy away in 
pursuit of them, Joe to hammer and clink for them, and all the 
murky shadows on the wall to shake at them in menace as the 
blaze rose and sank and the red-hot sparks drojDped and died, 
the pale afternoon outside almost seemed in my pitying young 
fancy to have turned pale on their account, poor wretches. 

At last, Joe's job was done, and the ringing and roaring stopped. 
As Joe got on his coat, he mustered courage to propose that some 
of us should go down with the soldiers and see what came of the 
hunt. Mr. Pumblechook and ]\Ir. Hubble declined, on the plea of 



28 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

a pipe and ladies' society; but Mr. Wopsle said he would go, if 
Joe would. Joe said he was agreeable, and would take me, if Mrs. 
Joe approved. We never should have got leave to go, I am sure, 
but for Mrs. Joe's curiosity to know all about it and how it ended. 
As it was, she merely stipulated, " If you bring the boy back with 
his head blown to bits by a musket, don't look to me to put it 
together again." 

The sergeant took a poHte leave of the ladies, and parted from 
Mr. Pumblechook as from a comrade ; though I doubt if he were 
quite as fully sensible of that gentleman's merits under arid condi- 
tions, as when something moist was going. His men resumed their 
muskets and fell in. Mr. Wopsle, Joe, and I, received strict charge 
to keep in tlie rear, and to speak no word after we reached the 
marshes. When we were all out in the raw air and were steadily 
moving towards our business, I treasonably whispered to Joe, " I 
hope, Joe, we shan't find them." And Joe whispered to me, "I'd 
give a shilling if they had cut and run, Pip." 

We were joined by no stragglers from the village, for the weather 
was cold and threatening, the way dreary, the footing bad, darkness 
coming on, and the people had good fires in-doors and were keeping 
the day. A few faces hurried to glowing windows and looked 
after us, but none came out. W^e passed the finger-post, and held 
straight on to the churchyard. There, we were stopped a few min- 
utes by a signal from the sergeant's hand, while two or three of his 
men dispersed themselves among the graves, and also examined the 
porch. They came in again without finding anything, and then we 
struck out on the open marshes, through the gate at the side of 
the churchyard. A bitter sleet came rattling against us here on 
the east wind, and Joe took me on his back. 

Now that we were out upon the dismal wilderness where they 
little thought I had been within eight or nine hours, and had seen 
both men hiding, I considered for the first time, with great dread, 
if we should come upon them, Avould my particular convict suppose 
that it Avas I Avho had brought the soldiers there ? He had asked 
me if I was a deceiving imp, and he said I should be a fierce young 
hound if I joined the hunt against him. Would he believe that I 
was both imp and hound in treacherous earnest, and had betrayed 
him? 

It was of no use asking myself this question now. There I was, 
on Joe's back, and there was Joe beneath me, charging at the 
ditches like a hunter, and stimulating Mr. Wopsle not to tumble 
on his Roman nose, and to keep up with us. The soldiers ^\ere 
in front of us, extending into a pretty Avide hue with an interval 
between man and man. We were taking the coui'se I had begun 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 29 

with, and from which I had diverged into the mist. Either the 
mist was not out again yet, or the wind had dispelled it. Under 
the low red glare of sunset, the beacon, and the gibbet, and the 
mound of the Battery, and the opposite shore of the river, were 
plain, though all of a Avatery lead colour. 

With my heart thumping hke a blacksmith at Joe's broad shoul- 
der, I looked all about for any sign of the convicts. I could see 
none, I could hear none. Mr. Wopsle had greatly alarmed me 
more than once, by his blowing and hard breathing; but I knew 
the sounds by this time, and could dissociate them from the object 
of pursuit. I got a dreadful start, when I thought I heard the file 
still going ; but it was only a sheep bell. The sheep stopped in 
their eating and looked timidly at us ; and the cattle, their heads 
turned from the wind and sleet, stared angrily as if they held us 
responsible foi; both annoyances ; but, except these things, and the 
shudder of the dying day in every blade of grass, there was no break 
in the bleak stillness of the marshes. 

The soldiers were moving on in the direction of the old Battery, 
and we were moving on a little way behind them, when, all of a 
sudden, we all stopped. For, there had reached us, on the wings 
of the wind and rain, a long shout. It was repeated. It was at 
a distance towards the east, but it was long and loud. Nay, there 
seemed to be two or more shouts raised together — if one might 
judge from a confusion in the sound. 

To this effect the sergeant and the nearest men were speaking 
under their breath, when Joe and I came up. After another 
moment's listening, Joe (who was a good judge) agreed, and Mr. 
Wopsle (who was a bad judge) agreed. The sergeant, a decisive 
man, ordered that the sound should not be answered, but that the 
course should be changed, and that his men should make towards 
it "at the double." So w^e started to the right (where the East 
was), and Joe pounded away so wonderfully, that I had to hold on 
tight to keep my seat. 

It was a run indeed now, and what Joe called, in the only two 
words he spoke all the time, "a Winder." Down banks and up 
banks, and over gates, and splashing into dykes, and breaking 
among coarse rushes : no man cared where he went. As we came 
nearer to the shouting, it became more and more apparent that it 
was made by more than one voice. Sometimes, it seemed to stop 
altogether, and then the soldiers stopped. When it broke out 
again, the soldiers made for it at a greater rate than ever, and we 
after them. After a while, we had so run it down, that we could 
hear one voice calling " Murder ! " and another voice, " Convicts ! 
Runaways ! Guard ! This way for the runaway convicts ! " Then 



30 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

both voices would seem to be stifled in a struggle, and then would 
break out again. And when it had come to this, the soldiers ran 
like deer, and Joe too. 

The sergeant ran in first, when we had run the noise quite down, 
and two of his men ran in close upon him. Their pieces were 
cocked and levelled when we all ran in. 

" Here are both men ! " panted the sergeant, struggling at the 
bottom of a ditch. " Surrender, you two ! and confound you for 
two wild beasts ! Come asunder ! " 

Water was splashing, and mud was flying, and oaths were being 
sworn, and blows were being struck, when some more men went 
down into the ditch to help the sergeant, and dragged out, sepa- 
rately, my convict and the other one. Both were bleeding and 
panting and execrating and struggling ; but of course I knew them 
both directly. , 

" Mind ! " said my convict, wiping blood from his face with his 
ragged sleeves, and shaking torn hair from his fingers; "/ took 
him ! / give him up to you ! Mind that ! " 

"It's not much to be particular about," said the sergeant; "it'll 
do you small good, my man, being in the same plight yourself. 
Handcuff's there!" 

" I don't expect it to do me any good. I don't want it to do 
me more good than it does now," said my convict, with a greedy 
laugh. " I took him. He knows it. That's enough for me." 

The other convict was livid to look at, and, in addition to the 
old bruised left side of his face, seemed to be bruised and torn all 
over. He could not so much as get his breath to speak, until they 
were both separately handcuff"ed, but leaned upon a soldier to keep 
himself from falling. 

"Take notice, guard — he tried to murder me," were his first 
words, 

"Tried to murder him?" said my convict, disdainfully. "Try, 
and not do HI I took him, and giv' him up ; that's what I done. 
I not only prevented him getting off the marshes, but I dragged 
him here — dragged him this far on his way back. He's a gentle- 
man, if you please, this villain. Now, the Hulks has got its gen- 
tleman again, through me. Murder him 1 Worth my while, too, 
to murder him, when I could do worse and drag him back ! " 

The other one still gasped, "He tried — he tried — to — mur- 
der me. Bear — bear witness." 

" Lookee here ! " said my convict to the sergeant. " Single- 
handed I got clear of the prison-ship ; I made a dash and I done 
it. I could ha' got clear of these deatli-cold flats likewise — look 
at my leg : you won't find much iron on it — if I hadn't made 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 31 

discovery that he was here. Let him go free ? Let him profit by 
the means as I found out 1 Let him make a tool of me afresh and 
again 1 Once more ? No, no, no. If I had died at the bottom 
there;" and he made an emphatic swing at the ditch with his 
manacled hands; "I'd have held to him with that grip, that you 
should have been safe to find him in my hold." 

The other fugitive, who was evidently in extreme horror of his 
companion, repeated, " He tried to murder me. I should have 
been a dead man if y . had not come up." 

" He lies ! " said my convict, with fierce energy. " He's a liar 
born, and he'll die a liar. Look at his face ; ain't it written there ? 
Let him turn those eyes of his on me. I defy him to do it." 

The other, with an effort at a scornful smile — which could not, 
however, collect the nervous working of his mouth into any set 
expression, looked at the soldiers, and looked about at the marshes 
and at the sky, but certainly did not look at the speaker. 

"Do you see him? "pursued my convict. "Do you see what 
a villain he is 1 Do you see those grovelling and wandering eyes ? 
That's how he looked when we were tried together. He never 
looked at me." 

The other, always working and working his dry lips and turn- 
ing his eyes restlessly about him far and near, did at last turn 
them for a moment on the speaker, with the words, "You are not 
much to look at," and with a half-taunting glance at the bound 
hands. At that point, my convict became so frantically exas- 
perated, that he would have rushed upon him but for the inter- 
position of the soldiers. "Didn't I tell you," said the other 
convict then, " that he would murder me, if he could ? " And any 
one could see that he shook with fear, and that there broke out 
upon his lips curious white flakes, like thin snow. 

"Enough of this parley," said the sergeant. "Light those 
torches." 

As one of the soldiers, who carried a basket in lieu of a gun, 
went down on his knee to open it, my convict looked round him 
for the first time, and saw me. I had alighted from Joe's back on 
the brink of the ditch when we came up, and had not moved 
since. I looked at him eagerly when he looked at me, and slightly 
moved my hands and shook my head. I had been waiting for 
him to see me, that I might try to assure him of my innocence. 
It was not at all expressed to me that he even comprehended my 
intention, for he gave me a look that I did not understand, and it 
all passed in a moment. But if he had looked at me for an hour 
or for a day, I could not have remembered his face ever afterwards, 
as having been more attentive. 



32 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

The soldier with the basket soon got a light, and lighted three 
or four torches, and took one himself and distributed the others. 
It had been almost dark before, but now it seemed quite dark, 
and soon afterwards very dark. Before we departed from that 
spot, four soldiers standing in a ring, fired twice into the air. 
Presently we saw other torches kindled at some distance behind us, 
and others on the marshes on the opposite bank of the river. 
" All right," said the sergeant. " March." 

We had not gone far when three cannon were fired ahead of us 
with a sound that seemed to burst something inside my ear. 
"You are expected on board," said the sergeant to my convict; 
" they know you are coming. Don't straggle, my man. Close up 
here." 

The two were kept apart, and each walked surrounded by a 
separate guard. I had hold of Joe's hand now, and Joe carried 
one of the torches. Mr. Wopsle had been for going back, but Joe 
was resolved to see it out, so we went on with the party. There 
was a reasonably good path now, mostly on the edge of the river, 
with a divergence here and there where a dyke came, with a 
miniature windmill on it and a muddy sluice-gate. When I looked 
round, I could see the other lights coming in after us. The 
torches we carried, dropped great blotches of fire upon the track, 
and I could see those, too, lying smoking and flaring. I could see 
nothing else but black darkness. Our lights warmed the air 
about us with their pitchy blaze, and the two prisoners seemed 
rather to like that, as they limped along in the midst of the mus- 
kets. We could not go fast, because of their lameness ; and they 
were so spent, that two or three times we had to halt while they 
rested. 

After an hour or so of this travelling, we came to a rough wooden 
hut and a landing-place. There was a guard in the hut, and they 
challenged, and the sergeant answered. Then, we went into the 
hut, where there was a smell of tobacco and whitewash, and a 
bright fire, and a lamp, and a stand of muskets, and a drum, and 
a low wooden bedstead, like an overgrown mangle without the 
machinery, capable of holding about a dozen soldiers all at once. 
Three or four soldiers who lay upon it in their great-coats, were not 
much interested in us, but just lifted their heads and took a 
sleepy stare, and then lay down again. The sergeant made some 
kind of report, and some entry in a book, and tlien the convict 
whom I call the other convict was drafted off" with liis guard, to 
go on board first. 

My convict never looked at me, except that once. While we stood 
in the hut, he stood before the fire looking thoughtfully at it, or 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 33 

putting up his feet by turns upon the hob, and looking thought- 
fully at them as if he pitied them for their recent adventures. 
Suddenly, he turned to the sergeant, and remarked : 

" I wish to say something respecting this escape. It may pre- 
vent some persons laying under suspicion alonger me." 

"You can say what you like," returned the sergeant, standing 
coolly looking at him with his arms folded, "but you have no call 
to say it here. You'll have opportunity enough to say about it, 
and hear about it, before it's done with, you know." 

" I know, but this is another pint, a separate matter. A man can't 
starve ; at least / can't. I took some wittles, up at the willage 
over yonder — where the church stands a'most out on the marshes." 

" You mean stole," said the sergeant. 
' " And I'll tell you where from. From the blacksmith's." 

" Halloa ! " said the sergeant, staring at Joe. 

" Halloa, Pip ! " said Joe, staring at me. 

"It was some .broken wittles — that's what it was — and a 
dram of liquor, and a pie." 

"Have you happened to miss such an article as a pie, black- 
smith 1 " asked the sergeant, confidentially. 

" My wife did, at the verj^ moment when you came in. Don't 
you know, Pip 1 " 

"So," said my convict, turning his eyes on Joe in a moody 
manner, and without the least glance at me ; "so you're the black- 
smith, are you ? Then I'm sorry to say, I've eat your pie." 

"God knows you're welcome to it — so far as it was ever mine," 
returned Joe, with a saving remembrance of Mrs. Joe. " We don't 
know what you have done, but we wouldn't have you starved to 
death for it, poor miserable fellow-creatur. — Would us, Pip ? " 

The something that I had noticed before, clicked in the man's 
throat again, and he turned his back. The boat had returned, 
and his guard were ready, so we followed him to the landing-place 
made of rough stakes and stones, and saw him put into the boat, 
which was rowed by a crew of convicts like himself. No one 
seemed surprised to see him, or interested in seeing him, or glad to 
see him, or sorry to see him, or spoke a word, except that somebody 
in the boat growled as if to dogs, " Give way, you ! " which was 
the signal for the dip of the oars. By the light of the torches, we 
saw the black Hulk l}dng out a little way from the mud of the 
shore, like a wicked I^^oah's ark. Cribbed and barred and moored 
by massive nisty chains, the prison-ship seemed in my young eyes 
to be ironed like the prisoners. We saw the boat go alongside, 
and we saw him taken up the side and disappear. Then, the ends 
of the torches were flung hissing into the water, and went out, as 
if it were all over with him. 



34 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 



CHAPTER VI. 

My state of mind regarding the pilfering from which I had been 
so unexpectedly exonerated, did not impel me to frank disclosure ; 
but I hope it had some dregs of good at the bottom of it. 

I do not recall that I felt any tenderness of conscience in refer- 
ence to Mrs. Joe, when the fear of being found out was lifted off 
me. But I loved Joe — perhaps for no better reason in those 
early days than because the dear fellow let me love him — and, as 
to him, my inner self was not so easily composed. It was much 
upon my mind (particularly when I first saw him looking about 
for his file) that I ought to tell Joe the whole truth. Yet I did 
not, and for the reason that I mistrusted that if I did, he would 
think me worse than I was. The fear of losing Joe's confidence, 
and of thenceforth sitting in the chimney-corner at night staring 
drearily at my for ever lost companion and friend, tied up my 
tongue. I morbidly represented to myself that* if Joe knew it, I 
never afterwards could see him at the fireside feeling his fair 
whisker, without thinking that he was meditating on it. That, 
if Joe knew it, I never afterwards could see him glance, however 
casually, at yesterday's meat or pudding when it came on to-day's 
table, without thinking that he was debating whether I had been 
in the pantry. That, if Joe knew it, and at any subsequent period 
of our joint domestic life remarked that his beer was flat or thick, 
the conviction that he suspected Tar in it, would bring a rush of 
blood to my face. In a word, I was too cowardly to do what I 
knew to be right, as I had been too cowardly to avoid doing what 
I knew to be wrong. I had had no intercourse with the world at 
that time, and I imitated none of its many inhabitants who act in 
this manner. Quite an untaught genius, I made the discoveiy of 
the line of action for myself. 

As I was sleepy before we were far away from the prison-ship, 
Joe took me on his back again and carried me home. He must 
have had a tiresome journey of it, for Mr. Wopsle, being knocked 
up, was in such a very bad temper that if the Church had been 
thrown open, he would probably have excommunicated the whole 
expedition, beginning with Joe and myself. In his lay capacity, 
he persisted in sitting down, in the damp to such an insane extent, 
that when his coat was taken off to be dried at the kitchen fire, 
the circumstantial evidence on his trousers would have hanged him 
if it had been a capital oftence. 

By that time, I was staggering on the kitchen floor like a little 
drunkard, through having been newly set upon my feet, and 



GEE AT EXPECTATIONS. 35 

through having been fast asleep, and through waking in the heat 
and lights and noise of tongues. As I came to myself (with the 
aid of a heavy thump between the shoulders, and the restorative 
exclamation " Yah ! Was there ever such a boy as this ! " from 
my sister), I found Joe telling them about the convict's confession, 
and all the visitors suggesting different ways by which he had got 
into the pantry. Mr. Pumblechook made out, after carefully sur- 
veying the premises, that he had first got upon the roof of the' 
forge, and had then got upon the roof of the house, and had then 
let himself down the kitchen chimney by a rope made of his bed- 
ding cut into strips ; and as Mr. Pumblechook was very positive 
and drove his own chaise-cart — over everybody — it was agreed 
that it must be so. Mr. Wopsle, indeed, wildly cried out " No ! " 
with the feeble malice of a tired man ; but, as he had no theory, 
and no coat on, he was unanimously set at nought — not to men- 
tion his smoking hard behind, as he stood with his back to the 
kitchen fire to draw the damp out : which was not calculated to 
inspire confidence. 

This was all I heard that night before my sister clutched me, as 
a slumberous oftence to the company's eyesight, and assisted me up 
to bed with such a strong hand that I seemed to have fifty boots 
on, and to be dangling them all against the edges of the stairs. 
My state of mind, as I have described it, began before I was up in 
the morning, and lasted long after the subject had died out, and 
had ceased to be mentioned saving on exceptional occasions. 



CHAPTER YII. 

At the time when I stood in the churchyard, reading the family 
tombstones, I had just enough learning to be able to spell them 
out. My construction even of their simple meaning was not very 
correct, for I read "wife of the Above" as a complimentary refer- 
ence to my father's exaltation to a better world ; and if any one of 
my deceased relations had been referred to as "Below," I have no 
doubt I should have formed the worst opinions of that member of 
the family. Neither were my notions of the theological positions 
to which my Catechism bound me, at all accurate ; for, I have a 
lively remembrance that I supposed my declaration that I w^as to 
"walk in the same all the days of my life," laid me under an obli- 
gation always to go through the village from our house in one 
particular direction, and never to vary it by turning down by the 
wheelwright's or up by the mill. 



36 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

When I was old enough, I was to be apprenticed to Joe, and 
until I could assume that dignity I was not to be what Mrs. Joe 
called "Pompeyed," or (as I render it) pampered. Therefore, I 
was not only odd-boy about the forge, but if any neighbour hap- 
pened to want an extra boy to frighten birds, or pick up stones, or 
do any such job, I was favoured with the employment. In order, 
however, that our superior position might not be compromised 
•thereby, a money-box was kept on the kitchen mantel-shelf, into 
which it was publicly made known that all my earnings were 
di'opped. I have an impression that they were to be contributed 
eventually towards the liquidation of the National Debt, but 
I know I had no hope of any personal participation in the 
treasure. 

Mr. Wopsle's great-aunt kept an evening school in the village ; 
that is to say, she was a ridiculous old woman of limited means 
and unlimited infirmity, who used to go to sleep from six to seven 
every evening, in the society of youth who paid twopence per week 
each, for the improving opportunity of seeing her do it. She 
rented a small cottage, and Mr. Wopsle had the room upstairs, 
where we students used to overhear him reading aloud in a most 
dignified and terrific manner, and occasionally bumping on the ceil- 
ing. There was a fiction that Mr. Wopsle -"examined" the schol- 
ars once a quarter. What he did on those occasions was to turn 
up his cuffs, stick up his hair, and give us Mark Antony's oration 
over the body of Caesar. This was always followed by Collins's Ode 
on the Passions, wherein I particularly venerated Mr. Wopsle as 
Revenge, thromng his blood-stained sword in thunder down, and 
taking the War-denouncing trumpet with a withering look. It 
was not mth me then, as it was in later life, when I fell into the 
society of the Passions, and compared them Avith Collins and 
Wopsle, rather to the disadvantage of both gentlemen. 

Mr. Wopsle's great-aunt, besides keeping this Educational In- 
stitution, kept in the same room — a little general shop. She 
had no idea what stock she had, or what the price of anything 
in it was ; but there was a little greasy memorandum-book kept 
in a drawer, which served as a Catalogue of Prices, and by this 
oracle Biddy arranged all the shop transactions. Biddy was Mr. 
Wopsle's great-aunt's granddaughter ; I confess myself quite un- 
equal to the working out of the problem, what relation she was 
to Mr. Wopsle. She was an orphan like myself; like me, too, 
had been brought up by hand. She was most noticeable, I 
thought, in respect of her extremities ; for, her hair always wanted 
brushing, her hands always wanted washing, and her shoes always 
wanted mending and pulling up at heel. This description must be 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 37 

received with a week-day limitation. On Sundays she went to 
church elaborated. 

Much of my unassisted self, and more by the heljD of Biddy than 
of Mr. Wopsle's great-aunt, I struggled through the alphabet as if 
it had been a bramble-bush ; getting considerably worried and 
scratched by every letter. After that, I fell among those thieves, 
the nine figures, who seemed every evening to do something new 
to disguise themselves and baffle recognition. But, at last I 
began, in a purblind groping way, to read, write, and cipher, on 
the very smallest scale. 

One night, I was sitting in the chimney-corner with my slate, 
expending great efforts on the production of a letter to Joe, I 
think it must have been a full year after our hunt upon the 
marshes, for it was a long time after, and it was winter and a hard 
frost. With an alphabet on the hearth at my feet for reference, I 
contrived in an hour or two to print and smear this epistle : 

" mI deEr jo i opE U r krWitE wEll i opE i shAl soN 
B haBelL 4 2 teeDge U JO aN theN wE shOrl b sO glOdd 
aN wEn i M preNgtD 2 u JO w^oT larX an blEvE ME inF 
XN PiP." 

There was no indispensable necessity for my communicating 
with Joe by letter, inasmuch as he sat beside me and we were 
alone. But, I delivered this written communication (slate and all) 
with my own hand, and Joe received it, as a miracle of erudition. 

" I say, Pip, old chap ! " cried Joe, opening his blue eyes wide, 
" what a scholar you are ! Ain't you ? '"' 

" I should like to be," said I, glancing at the slate a,s he held it : 
with a misgiving that the writing was rather hilly. 

" Why, here's a J," said Joe, "and a equal to anythink ! Here's 
a J and a 0, Pip, and a J-0, Joe." 

I had never heard Joe read aloud to any greater extent than 
this monosyllable, and I had observed at church last Sunday, 
when I accidentally held our Prayer-Book upside down, that it 
seemed to suit his convenience quite as well ias if it had been all 
right. Wishing to embrace the present occasion of finding out 
whether in teaching Joe, I should have to begin quite at the 
beginning, I said, "Ah! But read the rest, Joe." 

"The rest, eh, Pip?" said Joe, looking at it with a slowly 
searching eye, " One, two, three. Why, here's three J's, and three 
O's, and three J-0, Joes, in it, Pip ! " 

I leaned over Joe, and, with the aid of my forefinger, read him 
the whole letter. 

" Astonishing ! " said Joe, when I had finished. " You are a 
scholar." 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 39 

" How do you spell Gargery, Joe 1 " I asked him, with a modest 
patronage. 

"I don't spell it at all," said Joe. 

" But supposing you did ? " 

"It can't be supposed," said Joe. " Tho' I'm oncommon fond 
of reading, too." 

"Are you, Joe?" 

"On-common. Give me," said Joe, "a good book, or a good 
newspaper, and sit me dowm afore a good fire, and I ask no better. 
Lord ! " he continued, after rubbing his knees a little, " when you 
do come to a J and a 0, and says you, ' Here, at last, is a J-0, 
Joe,' how interesting reading is ! " 

I derived from this last, that Joe's education, like Steam, was 
yet in its infancy. Pursuing the subject, I inquired : 

" Didn't you ever go to school, Joe, when you were as little as 
me?" 

"No, Pip." 

" Why didn't you ever go to school, Joe, when you were as little 
as me 1 " 

"Well, Pip," said Joe, taking up the poker, and settling him- 
self to his usual occupation when he was thoughtful, of slowly 
raking the fire between the lower bars : " I'll tell you. My 
father, Pip, he were given to drink, and when he were overtook 
with drink, he hammered away at my mother most onmerciful. It 
were a'most the only hammering he did, indeed, 'xcepting at myself. 
And he hammered at me with a wigour only to be equalled by the 
wigour with which he didn't hammer at his anwil. — You're a 
listening and understanding, Pip?" 

"Yes, Joe." 

" 'Consequence, my mother and me we ran away from my father 
several times ; and then my mother she'd go out to work, and 
she'd say, 'Joe,' she'd say, 'now, please God, you shall have some 
schooling, child,' and she'd put me to school. But my father were 
that good in his hart that he couldn't abear to be without us. So, 
he'd come with a most tremenjous crowd and make such a row at 
the doors of the houses where we was, that they used to be obli- 
gated to have no more to do with us and to give us up to him. 
And then he took us home and hammered us. Which, you see, 
Pip," said Joe, pausing in his meditative raking of the fire, and 
looking at me, "were a drawback on my learning." 

" Certainly, poor Joe ! " 

" Though mind you, Pip," said Joe, ^vith a judicial touch or two 
of the poker on the top bar, "rendering unto all their doo, and 
maintaining equal justice betwixt man and man, my father were 
that good in his hart, don't you see ? " 



40 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

I didn't see ; but I didn't say so. 

" Well ! " Joe pursued, " somebody must keep the pot a biliug, 
Pip, or the pot won't bile, don't you know ? " 

I saw that, and said so. 

" 'Consequence, my father didn't make objections to my going to 
work ; so I went to work at my present calling, which were his 
too, if he would have followed it, and I worked tolerable hard, I 
assure you^ Pip. In time I were able to keep him, and I kep him 
till he went off in a purple leptic fit. And it were my intentions 
to have had put upon his tombstone that Whatsume'er the failings 
on his part. Remember reader he were that good in his hart." 

Joe recited this couplet with such manifest pride and careful 
perspicuity, that I asked him if he had made it liimself 

"I made it," said Joe, "my own self I made it in a moment. 
It was like striking out a horseshoe complete, in a single blow. I 
never was so much surprised in all my life — couldn't credit my 
own ed — to tell you the truth, hardly believed it were my own 
ed. As I Avas saying, Pip, it were my intentions to have had it 
cut over him ; but poetry costs money, cut it how you will, small 
or large, and it were not done. Not to mention bearers, all the 
money that could be spared were wanted for my mother. She 
were in poor elth, and quite broke. She waren't long of following, 
poor soul, and her share of peace come round at last." 

Joe's blue eyes turned a little watery; he rubbed, first one of 
them, and then the other, in a most uncongenial and uncomfortable 
manner, with the round knob on the top of the poker. 

"It were but lonesome then," ."^aid Joe, "living here alone, and 
I got acquainted with your sister. Now, Pip ; " Joe looked firmly 
at me, as if he knew I was not going to agree with him ; " your 
sister is a fine figure of a woman." 

I could not help looking at the fire, in an oli^ious state of 
doubt. 

"Whatever family opinions, or whatever the world's opinions, on 
that subject may be, Pip, your sister is," Joe tapped the top bar 
with the poker after every word following, "a — fine — figure — 
of — a — woman ! " 

I could think of nothing better to say than " I am glad you 
think so, Joe." 

" So am I," returned Joe, catching me up. " / am glad I think 
so, Pip. A little redness, or a little matter of Bone, here or there, 
what does it signify to Me % " 

I sagaciously observed, if it didn't signify to him, to whom did 
it signify ? 

" Certainly ! " assented Joe. " That's it. You're right, old 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 41 

chap ! When I got acquaiuted with your sister, it were the talk 
how she was bringing you up by hand. Very kind of her too, all 
the folks said, and I said, along with all the folks. As to you," 
Joe pursued, with a countenance expressive of seeing sometliing 
very nasty indeed : " if you could have been aware how small and 
flabby and mean you was, dear me, you'd have formed the most 
contemptible opinions of yourself ! " 

Not exactly relishing this, I said, " Never mind me, Joe." 

"But I did mind you, Pip," he returned, with tender simplicity. 
" When I offered to your sister to keep company, and to be asked 
in church, at such times as she was willing and ready to come to 
the forge, I said to her, ' And bring the poor little child. God 
bless the poor little child,' I said to your sister, 'there's room for 
him at the forge ! ' " 

I broke out crying and begging pardon, and hugged Joe round 
the neck : who dropped the poker to hug me, and to say, " Ever 
the best of friends ; ain't us, Pip 1 Don't cry, old chap ! " 

When this little interruption was over, Joe resumed : 

" Well, you see, Pip, and here we are ! That's about where it 
lights ; here we are ! Now, when you take me in hand in my 
learning, Pip (and I tell you beforehand I am awful dull, most 
awful dull), Mrs. Joe mustn't see too much of v/hat we're up to. It 
must be done, as I may say, on the sly. And why on the sly 1 
I'll tell you why, Pip." 

He had taken up the poker again ; without which, I doubt if he 
could have proceeded in his demonstration. 

"Your sister is given to government." 

" Given to government, Joe 1 " I was startled, for I had some 
shadowy idea (and I am afraid I must add, hope) that Joe had 
divorced her in favour of the Lords of the Admiralty, or Treasury. 

"Given to government," said Joe. "Which I meantersay the 
government of you and myself." 

" Oh ! " 

" And she ain't over partial to having scholars on the premises," 
Joe continued, "and in partickler would not be over partial to my 
being a scholar, for fear as I might rise. Like a sort of rebel, 
don't you see 1 " 

I was going to retort with an inquiry, and had got as far as 
"Why " when Joe stopped me. 

" Stay a bit. I know what you're a going to say, Pip ; stay a 
bit ! I don't deny that your sister comes the Mo-gul over us, now 
and again. I don't deny that she do throw us back-falls, and that 
she do drop down upon us heavy. At such times as when your 
sister is on the Ram-page, Pip," Joe sank his voice to a whisper 



42 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

and glanced at the door, "candour compels fur to admit that she 
is a Buster." 

Joe pronounced this word, as if it began with at least twelve 
capital B's. 

"Why don't I rise? That were your observation when I broke 
it off, Pip?" 

"Yes, Joe." 

"Well," said Joe, passing the poker into his left hand, that he 
might feel his whisker ; and I had no hope of him whenever he 
took to that placid occupation; "your sister's a master-mind. A 
master-mind." 

" What's that ? " I asked, in some hope of bringing him to a 
stand. But, Joe was readier with his definition than I had ex- 
pected, and completely stopped me by arguing circularly, and 
answering with a fixed look, " Her." 

"And I ain't a master-mind," Joe resumed, when he had unfixed 
his look, and got back to his whisker. "And last of all, Pip — 
and this I want to say very serous to you, old chap — I see so 
much in my poor mother, of a woman drudging and slaving and 
breaking her honest hart and never getting no peace in her mortal 
days, that I'm dead afeerd of going wrong in the way of not doing 
what's right by a woman, and I'd fur rather of the two go wrong 
the t'other way, and be a little ill-conwenienced myself. I wish it 
was only me that got put out, Pip ; I wish there warn't no Tickler 
for you, old chap; I wish I could take it all on myself; but this 
is the up-and-down-and-straight on it, Pip, and I hope you'll over- 
look shortcomings." 

Young as I w^as, I believe that I dated a new admiration of Joe 
from that night. We were equals afterwards, as we had been be- 
fore ; but, afterwards at quiet times when I sat looking at Joe and 
thinking about him, I had a new sensation of feeling conscious that 
I was looking up to Joe in my heart. 

"However," said Joe, rising to replenish the fire; "here's the 
Dutch-clock a working himself up to being equal to strike Eight of 
'em, and she's not come home yet ! I hope Uncle Pumblechook's 
mare mayn't have set a fore-foot on a piece o' ice, and gone down." 

Mrs. Joe made occasional trips with Uncle Pumblechook on 
market-days, to assist him in buying such household stuffs and 
goods as required a woman's judgment ; Uncle Pumblechook being 
a bachelor and reposing no confidences in his domestic servant. 
This was market-day, and Mrs. Joe was out on one of these expe- 
ditions. 

Joe made the fire and swept the hearth, and then we went to 
the door to listen for the chaise-cart. It was a dry cold night, and 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 43 

the wind blew keenly, and the frost was white and hard. A man 
would die to-night of lying out on the marshes, I thought. And 
then I looked at the stars, and considered how awful it would be 
for a man to turn his face up to them as he froze to death, and see 
no help or pity in all the glittering multitude. 

" Here comes the mare," said Joe, "ringing like a peal of bells ! " 

The sound of her iron shoes upon the hard road was quite musi- 
cal, as she came along at a much brisker trot than usual. We got a 
cliair out, ready for Mrs. Joe's alighting, and stirred up the fire 
that they might see a bright window, and took a final survey of 
the kitchen that nothing might be out of its place. When Ave had 
completed these preparations, they drove up, wrapped to the eyes. 
Mrs. Joe was soon landed, and Uncle Pumblechook was soon down 
too, covering the mare with a cloth, and we were soon all in the 
kitchen, carrying so much cold air with us that it seemed to drive 
all the heat out of the fire. 

" Now," said Mrs. Joe, unwrapping herself with haste and excite- 
ment, and throwing her bonnet back on her shoulders where it hung 
by the strings : "if this boy ain't grateful this night, he never will 
be!" 

I looked as grateful as any boy could, who was wholly unin- 
formed why he ought to assume that expression. 

" It's only to be hoped," said my sister, "that he won't be Pom- 
peyed. But I have my fears." 

" She ain't in that line. Mum," said Mr. Pumblechook. " She 
knows better." 

She? I looked at Joe, making the motion A^ith my lips and 
eyebrows, " She 1 " Joe looked at me, making the motion with 
his lips and eyebrows, " She 1 " My sister catching him in the act, 
he drew the back of his hand across his nose with his usual concil- 
iatory air on such occasions, and looked at her. 

" Well? " said my sister, in her snappish way. " What are you 
staring at ? Is the house afire 1 " 

" — Which some individual," Joe politely hinted, "mentioned 
she." 

"And she is a she, I suppose?" said my sister. "Unless you 
call Miss Havisham a he. And I doubt if even you'll go so far 
as that." 

" Miss Havisham up town ? " said Joe. 

"Is there any Miss Havisham down town?" returned my sister. 
" She wants this boy to go and play there. And of course he's 
going. And he had better play there," said my sister, shaking her 
head at me as an encouragement to be extremely light and sport- 
ive, " or I'll work him." 



44 GREAT EXPECTxVTIONS. 

I had beard of Miss Havisbam up town — everj^body for miles 
round bad beard of Miss Havisbam up town — as an immensely 
ricb and grim lady wbo lived in a large and dismal bouse barri- 
caded against robbers, and wbo led a life of seclusion. 

" Well to be sure ! " said Joe, astounded. " I wonder bow sbe 
comes to know Pip ! " 

" Noodle ! '"' cried my sister. " Wbo said sbe knew bim ? " 

" — Wbicb some individual," Joe again politely binted, "men- 
tioned tbat sbe wanted bim to go and play tliere." 

"And couldn't sbe ask Uncle Pumblecbook if be knew of a boy 
to go and play tbere? Isn't it just barely possible tbat Uncle 
Pumblecbook may be a tenant of bers, and tbat be may sometimes 
— we won't say quarterly or, balf-yearly, for tbat would be requir- 
ing too mucb of you — but sometimes — go tbere to pay bis rent ? 
And couldn't sbe tlien ask Uncle Pumblecbook if be knew of a boy 
to go and play tbere? And couldn't Uncle Pumblecbook, being 
always considerate and tbougbtful for us — tbougb you may not 
tbink it, JosejDb," in a tone of tbe deepest reproacb, as if be were 
tbe most callous of nepbews, "tben mention tbis boy, standing 
Prancing bere " — wbicb I solemnly declare I was not doing — 
" tbat I bave for ever been a willing slave to ? " 

" Good again ! " cried Uncle Pumblecbook. " Well put ! Pret- 
tily pointed ! Good indeed ! Now, Josepb, you know tbe case." 

"No, Josepb," said my sister, still in a reproachful manner, wbile 
Joe apologetically drew tbe back of bis band across and across bis 
nose, "you do not yet — tbougb you may not tbink it — know 
tbe case. You may consider tbat you do, but you do not, Josepb. 
For you do not know tbat Uncle Pumblecbook, being sensible tbat 
for anything we can tell, tbis boy's fortune may be made by bis 
going to Miss Havisbam's, has offered to take bim into town to- 
night in bis own chaise-cart, and to keep bim to-night, and to take 
bim with bis own bands to Miss Havisbam's to-morrow morning. 
And Lor-a-mussy me ! " cried my sister, casting off her bonnet in 
sudden desperation, "here I stand talking to mere Mooncalfs, with 
Uncle Pumblecbook w^aiting, and the mare catching cold at tbe 
door, and tbe boy grimed with crock and dirt from tlie hair of liis 
head to tbe sole of his foot ! " 

With tbat, sbe pounced on me, like an eagle on a lamb, and my 
face was squeezed into wooden bowls in sinks, and my head was 
put under taps of water-butts, and I was soaped, and kneaded, and 
towelled, and thumped, and harrowed, and rasped, until I really 
was quite beside myself. (I may here remark tliat I suppose ray- 
self to be better acquainted than any living authority, with the 
ridgy effect of a wedding-ring, passing unsympathetically over the 
human countenance.) 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 45 

When my ablutions were completed, I was put into clean linen 
of the stiffest character, like a young penitent into sackcloth, and 
was trussed up in my tightest and fearfullest suit. I was then 
delivered over to Mr. Pumblechook, who formally received me as 
if he were the Sheriff, and who let off upon me the speech that I 
knew he had been dying to make all along : " Boy, be for ever 
grateful to all friends, but especially unto them which brought you 
up by hand ! " 

"Goodbye, Joe!" 

" God bless you, Pip, old chap ! " 

I had never parted from him before, and what with my feelings 
and what with soap-suds, I could at first see no stars from the 
chaise-cart. But they twinkled out one by one, without throwing 
any light on the questions why on earth I was going to play at 
Miss Havisham's, and what on earth I was expected to play at. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

Mr. Pumblechook's premises in the High-street of the market 
town, were of a peppercorny and farinaceous character, as the prem- 
ises of a corn-chandler and seedsman should be. It appeared to 
me that he must be a very happy man indeed, to have so many 
little drawers in his shop : and I wondered when I peeped into 
one or two on the lower tiers, and saw the tied-up brown paper 
packets inside, whether the flower-seeds and bulbs ever wanted of 
a fine day to break out of those jails, and bloom. 

It was in the early morning after my arrival that I entertained 
this speculation. On the previous night, I had been sent straight 
to bed in an attic with a sloping roof, which was so low in the cor- 
ner where the bedstead was, that I calculated the tiles as being 
within a foot of my eyebrows. In the same early morning, I dis- 
covered a singular affinity between seeds and corduroys. Mr. 
Pumblechook wore corduroys, and so did his shopman; and some- 
how, there was a general air and flavour about the corduroys, so 
much in the nature of seeds, and a general air and flavour about 
the seeds, so much in the nature of corduroys, that I hardly knew 
which was which. The same opportunity served me for noticing 
that Mr. Pumblechook appeared to conduct his business by looking 
across the street at the saddler, who appeared to transact his busi- 
ness by keeping his eye on the coach-maker, who appeared to get 
on in life by putting his hands in his pockets and contemplating 
the baker, who in his turn folded his arms and stared at the grocer, 



46 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

who stood at his door and yawned at the chemist. The watch- 
maker, always poring over a little desk with a magnifying glass 
at his eye, and always inspected by a group in smock-frocks por- 
ing over him through the glass of his shoj^-window, seemed to be 
about the only person in the High-street whose trade engaged his 
attention. 

Mr. Pumblechook and I breakfasted at eight o'clock in the par- 
lour behind the shop, while the shopman took his mug of tea and 
hunch of bread-and-butter on a sack of peas in the front premises. 
I considered Mr. Pumblechook wretched company. Besides being 
possessed by my sister's idea that a mortifying and penitential char- 
acter ought to be imparted to my diet — besides giving me as much 
crumb as possible in combination with as little butter, and putting 
such a quantity of warm water into my milk that it would have 
been more candid to have left the milk out altogether — his con- 
versation consisted of nothing but arithmetic. On my politely bid- 
ding him Good morning, he said, pompously, " Seven times nine, 
boy ? " And how should I be able to answer, dodged in that way, 
in a strange place, on an empty stomach ! I Avas hungry, but before 
I had swallowed a morsel, he began a nmning sum that lasted all 
through the breakfast. " Seven 1 " " And four 1 " " And eight 1 " 
" And six ? " " And two 1 " " And ten ? " And so on. And after 
each figure was disposed of, it was as much as I could do to get a 
bite or a sup, before the next came ; while he sat at his ease guess- 
ing nothing, and eating bacon and hot roll, in (if I may be allowed 
the expression) a gorging and gormandising manner. 

For such reasons I was very glad when ten o'clock came and we 
started for Miss Havisham's ; though I was not at all at my ease 
regarding the manner in which I should acquit myself under that 
lady's roof. Within a quarter of an hour we came to Miss Havis- 
ham's house, which was of old brick, and dismal, and had a great 
many iron bars to it. Some of the windows had been walled up ; 
of those that remained, all the lower were rustily barred. There 
was a courtyard in front, and that was barred; so, we had to 
Avait, after ringing the bell, until some one should come to open it. 
While we waited at the gate, I peeped in (even then Mr. Pumble- 
chook said, "And fourteen?" but I pretended not to hear him), 
and saw that at the side of the house there was a large brewery. 
No brewing was going on in it, and none seemed to have gone on 
for a long time. 

A window was raised, and a clear voice demanded " What 
name?" To which my conductor replied, "Pumblechook." The 
voice returned, " Quite right," and the window was shut again, and 
a young lady came across the courtyard, with keys in her hand. 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 47 

"This," said Mr. Pumblechook, "is Pip." 
" This is Pip, is it ? " returned the young lady, who was very 
pretty and seemed very proud; "come in, Pip." 

Mr. Pumblechook was coming in also, when she stopped him 
with the gate. 

" Oh ! " she said. " Did you wish to see Miss Havisham ? " 

" If Miss Havisham wished to see me," returned Mr. Pumble- 
chook, discomfited. 

"Ah ! " said the girl ; "but you see she don't." 

She said it so finally, and in such an undiscussable way, that 
Mr. Pumblechook, though in a condition of ruffled dignity, could 
not protest. But he eyed me severely — as if / had done anything 
to him ! — and departed with the words reproachfully delivered : 
" Boy ! Let your behaviour here be a credit unto them which 
brought you up by hand ! " I was not free from apprehension that 
he would come back to propound through the gate, "And six- 
teen?" But he didn't. 

My young conductress locked the gate, and we went across the 
courtyard. It was paved and clean, but grass was growing in 
every crevice. The brewery buildings had a little lane of com- 
munication with it ; and the wooden gates of that lane stood open, 
and all the brewery beyond stood open, away to the high enclos- 
ing wall ; and all was empty and disused. The cold wind seemed 
to blow colder there, than outside the gate ; and it made a shrill 
noise in howling in and out at the open sides of the brewery, like 
the noise of wind in the rigging of a ship at sea. 

She saw me looking at it, and she said, " You could drink with- 
out hurt all the strong beer that's brewed there now, boy." 

" I should think I could, miss," said I, in a shy way. 

"Better not try to brew beer there now, or it would turn out 
sour, boy ; don't you think so ? " 

" It looks like it, miss." 

"Not that anybody means to try," she added, "for that's all 
done with, and the place will stand as idle as it is, till it falls. 
As to strong beer, there's enough of it in the cellars already, to 
drown the Manor House." 

" Is that the name of this house, miss ? " 

"One of its names, boy." 

" It has more than one, then, miss ? " 

" One more. Its other name was Satis ; which is Greek, or 
Latin, or Hebrew, or all three — or all one to me — for enough." 

"Enough House ! " said I : "that's a curious name, miss." 

"Yes," she replied; "but it meant more than it said. It 
meant, when it was given, that whoever had this house, could 




PIP WAITS OX MISS HAVISHAM. 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 49 

want nothing else. They must have been easily satisfied in those 
days, I should think. But don't loiter, boy." 

Though she called me "boy" so often, and with a carelessness 
that was far from complimentary, she was of about my own age. 
She seemed much older than I, of course, being a girl, and beauti- 
ful and self-jiossessed ; and she M'-as as scornful of me as if she had 
been one-and-twenty, and a queen. 

We went into the house by a side door — the great front 
entrance had two chains across it outside — and the first thing I 
noticed was, that the passages were all dark, and that she had left 
a candle burning there. She took it up, and we went through 
more passages and up a staircase, and still it was all dark, and 
only the candle lighted us. 

At last we came to the door of a room, and she said, "Go in." 

I answered, more in shyness than politeness, "After you, miss." 

To this, she returned: "Don't be ridiculous, boy; I am not 

going in." And scornfully walked away, and — what was worse 

— took the candle with her. 

This was very uncomfortable, and I was half afraid. However, 
the only thing to be done being to knock at the door, I knocked, 
and was told from within to enter. I entered, therefore, and 
found myself in a pretty large room, well lighted with wax candles. 
No glimpse of daylight was to be seen in it. It was a dressing- 
room, as I supposed from the furniture, though much of it was of 
forms and uses then quite unknown to me. But prominent in it 
was a draped table with a gilded looking-glass, and that I made 
out at first sight to be a fine lady's dressiug-table. 

Whether I should have made out this object so soon, if there 
had been no fine lady sitting at it, I cannot say. In an arm-chair, 
with an elbow resting on the table and her head leaning on that 
hand, -sat the strangest lady I have ever seen, or shall ever see. 

She was dressed in rich materials — satins, and lace, and silks 

— all of white. Her shoes were white. And she had a long 
white veil dependent from her hair, and she had bridal flowers in 
her hair, but her hair was white. Some bright jewels sparkled on 
her neck and on her hands, and some other jewels lay sparkling on 
the table. Dresses, less splendid than the dress she wore, and 
half-packed trunks, were scattered about. She had not quite 
finished dressing, for she had but one shoe on — the other was on 
the table near her hand — her veil was but half arranged, her 
watch and chain were not put on, and some lace for her bosom lay 
with those trinkets, and with her handkerchief, and gloves, and 
some flowers, and a Prayer-book, all confusedly heaped about the 
looking-glass. 



50 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

It was not in the first few moments that I saw all these things, 
though I saw more of them in the first moments than might be 
supposed. But, I saw that everytiiing within my view which 
ought to be white, had been Avhite long ago, and had lost its 
lustre, and was faded and yellow. I saw that the bride within 
the bridal dress had withered like the dress, and like the flowers, 
and had no brightness left but the brightness of her sunken eyes. 
I saw that the dress had been put upon the rounded figure of a 
young woman, and that the figure upon which it now hung loose, 
had shrunk to skin and bone. Once, I had been taken to see some 
ghastly waxwork at the Fair, representing I know not what 
impossible personage lying in state. Once, I had been taken to 
one of our old marsh churches to see a skeleton in the ashes of a 
rich dress, that had been dug out of a vault under the church pave- 
ment. Now, waxwork and skeleton seemed to have dark eyes 
that moved and looked at me. I should have cried out, if I could. 

" Who is it ? " said the lady at the table. 

"Pip, ma'am." 

"Pip?" 

"Mr. Pumblechook's boy, ma'am. Come — to play." 

" Come nearer ; let me look at you. Come close." 

It was when I stood before her, avoiding her eyes, that I took 
note of the surrounding objects in detail, and saw that her watch 
had stopped at twenty minutes to nine, and that a clock in the 
room had stopped at twenty minutes to nine. 

"Look at me," said Miss Havisham. "You are not afraid of a 
woman who has never seen the sun since you were born ? " 

I regret .to state that I was not afraid of telling the enormous 
lie comprehended in the answer "No." 

"Do you know what I touch here?" she said, laying her hands, 
one upon the other, on her left side. 

"Yes, ma'am." (It made me think of the young man.) 

"What do I touch?" 

"Your heart." 

"Broken!" 

She uttered the word with an eager look, and with strong em- 
phasis, and with a weird smile that had a kind of boast in it. 
Afterwards, she kept her hands there for a little while, and slowly 
took them away as if they were heavy. 

"I am tired," said Miss Havisham. "I want diversion, and I 
have done with men and women. Play." 

I think it will be conceded by my most disputatious reader, that 
she could hardly have directed an unfortunate boy to do anything 
in the wide world more difficult to be done under the circumstances. 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 51 

"I sometimes have sick fancies," she went on, "and I have a 
sick fancy that I want to see some play. There, there ! " with an 
impatient movement of the fingers of her right hand ; " play, play, 
play ! " 

For a moment, with the fear of my sister's working me before 
my eyes, I had a desperate idea of starting round the room in the 
assumed character of Mr. Pumblechook's chaise-cart. But, I felt 
myself so unequal to the performance that I gave it up, and stood 
looking at Miss Havisham in what I suppose she took for a dogged 
manner, inasmuch as she said, when we had taken a good look at 
each other : 

" Are you sullen and obstinate 1 " 

" No, ma'am, I am very sorry for you, and very sorry I can't 
play just now. If you complain of me I shall get into trouble 
with my sister, so I would do it if I could ; but it's so new here, 

and so strange, and so fine — and melancholy " I stopped, 

fearing I might say too much, or had already said it, and we took 
another look at each other. 

Before she spoke again, she turned her eyes from me, and looked 
at the dress she wore, and at the dressing-table, and finally at her- 
self in the looking-glass. 

"So new to him," she muttered, "so old to me; so strange to 
him, so familiar to me ; so melancholy to both of us ! Call 
Estella." 

As she was still looking at the reflection of herself, I thought 
she was still talking to herself, and kept quiet. 

" Call Estella," she repeated, flashing a look at me. " You can 
do that. Call Estella. At the door." 

To stand in the dark in a mysterious passage of an unknown 
house, bawling Estella to a scornful young lady neither visible nor 
responsive, and feeling it a dreadful liberty so to roar out her 
name, was almost as bad as playing to order. But, she answered 
at last, and her light came along the dark passage like a star. 

Miss Havisham beckoned her to come close, and took up a jewel 
from the table, and tried its eff'ect upon her fair young bosom and 
against her pretty brown hair. 

" Your own, one day, my dear, and you will use it well. Let 
me see you play cards with this boy." 

" With this boy ! Why, he is a common labouring-boy ! " 

I thought I overheard Miss Havisham answer — only it seemed 
so unlikely — " Well ? You can break his heart." 

"What do you play, boy?" asked Estella of myself, with the 
greatest disdain. 

"Nothing but beggar my neighbour, miss." 



62 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

"Beggcir him," said Miss Havisham to Estella. So we sat 
down to cards. 

It was then I began to understand that everything in the room 
had stopped, Hke the watch and the clock, a long time ago. I 
noticed that Miss Havisham put down the jewel exactly on the 
spot from which she had taken it up. As Estella dealt the cards, 
I glanced at the dressing-table again, and saw that the shoe upon 
it, once white, now yellow, had never been worn. I glanced down 
at the foot from which the shoe was absent, and saw that the silk 
stocking on it, once white, now yellow, had been trodden ragged. 
Without this arrest of everything, this standing still of all the pale 
decayed objects, not even the withered bridal dress on the collapsed 
form could have looked so like grave-clothes, or the long veil so like 
a shroud. 

So she sat, corpse-like, as we played at cards ; the frillings and 
trimmings on her bridal dress, looking like earthy paper. I knew 
nothing then of the discoveries that are occasionally made of bodies 
buried in ancient times, which fall to powder in the moment of 
being distinctly seen; but, I have often thought since, that she 
must have looked as if the admission of the natural light of day 
would have struck her to dust. 

" He calls the knaves. Jacks, this boy ! " said Estella with dis- 
dain, before our first game was out. " And what coarse hands he 
has ! And what thick boots ! '" 

I had never thought of being ashamed of my hands before ; but 
I began to consider them a very indifferent pair. Her contempt 
for me was so strong, that it became infectious, and I caught it. 

She won the game, and I dealt. I misdealt, as was only natu- 
ral, when I knew she was lying in wait for me to do wrong; and 
she denounced me for a stupid, clumsy labouring-boy. 

"You say nothing of her," remarked Miss Havisham to me, as 
she looked on. " She says many hard things of you, yet you say 
nothing of her. What do you think of her ? " 

" I don't like to say," I stammered. 

" Tell me in my ear," said Miss Havisham, bending down. 

" I think she is very proud," I replied, in a whisper. 

" Anything else ? " 

"I think she is very pretty." 

*' Anything else ? " 

" I think she is very insulting." (She was looking at me then 
with a look of supreme aversion.) 

" Anything else ?" 

"I think I should like to go home." 

" And never see her again, though she is so pretty ? " 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 68 

"I am not sure that I shouldn't like to see her again, but I 
should like to go home now." 

"You shall go soon," said Miss Havisham aloud. "Play the 
game out." 

Saving for the one weird smile at first, I should have felt almost 
sure that Miss Havisham's face could not smile. It had dropped 
into a watchful and branding expression — most likely when all 
the things about her had become transfixed — and it looked as 
if nothing could ever lift it up again. Her chest had dropped, so 
that she stooped; and her voice had dropped, so that she spoke 
low, and with a dead lull upon her ; altogether, she had the 
appearance of having dropped, body and soul, within and without, 
under th6 weight of a crushing blow. 

I played the game to an end with Estella, and she beggared me. 
She threw the cards down on the table when she had won them 
all, as if she despised them for having been won of me. 

"When shall I have you here again?" said Miss Havisham. 
"Let me think." 

I was beginning to remind her that to-day was Wednesday, 
when she checked me with her former impatient movement of 
the fingers of her right hand. 

" There, there ! I know nothing of days of the week ; I know 
nothing of weeks of the year. Come again after six days. You 
hear?" 

"Yes, ma'am." 

"Estella, take him down. Let him have something to eat, and 
let him roam and look about him while he eats. Go, Pip." 

I followed the candle dowia, as I had followed the candle up, 
and she stood it in the place where we had found it. Until she 
opened the side entrance, I had fancied, without thinking about it, 
that it must necessarily be night-time. The rush of the daylight 
quite confounded me, and made me feel as if I had been in the 
candlelight of the strange room many hours. 

"You are to wait here, you boy," said Estella; and disappeared 
and closed the door. 

I took the opportunity of being alone in the courtyard, to look 
at my coarse hands and my common boots. My opinion of those 
accessories was not favourable. They had never troubled me 
before, but they troubled me now, as vulgar appendages. I 
determined to ask Joe why he had ever taught me to call those 
picture-cards. Jacks, which ought to be called knaves. I wished 
Joe had been rather more genteelly brought up, and then I should 
have been so too. 

She came back, with some bread and meat and a little mug of 



54 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

beer. She put the mug down on the stones of the yard, and gave 
me the bread and meat without looking at me, as insolently as if 
I were a dog in disgrace. I was so humiliated, hurt, spurned, 
oftended, angry, sorry — I cannot hit upon the right name for the 
smart — God knows what its name was — that tears started to 
my eyes. Tlie moment they sprang there, the girl looked at me 
with a quick delight in having been the cause of them. This gave 
me power to keep them back and to look at her : so, she gave a 
contemptuous toss — but with a sense, I thought, of having made 
too sure that I was so wounded — and left me. 

But, when she was gone, I looked about me for a place to hide 
my face in, and got behind one of the gates in the brewery-lane, 
and leaned my sleeve against the wall there, and leaned my fore- 
head on it and cried. As I cried, I kicked the wall, and took a 
hard twist at my hair; so bitter were my feelings, and so sharp 
was the smart without a name, that needed counteraction. 

My sister's bringing up had made me sensitive. In the little 
world in which children have their existence, whosoever brings 
them up, there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt, as 
injustice. It may be only small injustice that the child can be 
exposed to ; but the child is small, and its world is small, and its 
rocking-horse stands as many hands high, according to scale, as 
a big-boned Irish hunter. Within myself, I had sustained, from 
my babyhood, a perpetual conflict with injustice. I had known, 
from the time when I could speak, that my sister, in her capricious 
and violent coercion, was unjust to me. I had cherished a pro- 
found conviction that her bringing me up by hand, gave her no 
right to bring me up by jerks. Through all my punishments, dis- 
graces, fasts and vigils, and other penitential performances, I had 
nursed this assurance ; and to my communing so much with it, in 
a solitary and unprotected way, I in great part refer the fact that 
I was morally timid and very sensitive. 

I got rid of my injured feelings for the time, by kicking them 
into the brewery-wall, and twisting them out of my hair, and then 
I smoothed my face with my sleeve, and came from behind the 
gate. The bread and meat were acceptable, and the beer was 
warming and tingling, and I was soon in spirits to look about me. 

To be sure, it was a deserted place, down to the pigeon-house in 
the brewery-yard, which had been blown crooked on its pole by 
some high wind, and would have made the pigeons think them- 
selves at sea, if there had been any pigeons there to be rocked by 
it. But, there were no pigeons in the dove-cot, no horses in the 
stable, no pigs in the sty, no malt in the store-house, no smells of 
grains and beer in the copper or the vat. All the uses and scents 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 65 

of the brewery might have evaporated with its last reek of smoke. 
In a bye-yard, there was a wilderness of empty casks, which had a 
certain sour remembrance of better days Hngering about them ; but 
it was too sour to be accepted as a sample of the beer that was 
gone — and in this respect I remember those recluses as being like 
most others. 

Behind the furthest end of the brewery, was a rank garden with 
an old wall : not so high but that I could struggle up and hold on 
long enough to look over it, and see that the rank garden was the 
garden of the house, and that it was overgrown with tangled weeds, 
but that there was a track upon the green and yellow paths, as if 
some one sometimes walked there, and that Estella was walking 
away from me even then. But she seemed to be everywhere. 
For, when I yielded to the temptation presented by the casks, and 
began to walk on them, I saw her walking on them at the end of 
the yard of casks. She had her back towards me, and held her 
pretty brown hair spread out in her two hands, and never looked 
round, and passed out of my view directly. So, in the breweiy 
itself — by which I mean the large paved lofty place in which they 
used to make the beer, and where the brewing utensils still were. 
When I first went into it, and, rather oppressed by its gloom, 
stood near the door looking about me, I saw her pass among the 
extinguished fires, and ascend some light iron stairs, and go out by 
a gallery high overhead, as if she were going out into the sky. 

It was in this place, and at this moment, that a strange thing 
happened to my fancy. I thought it a strange thing then, and I 
thought it a stranger thing long afterwards. I turned my eyes — 
a little dimmed by looking up at the frosty light — towards a great 
wooden beam in a low nook of the building near me on my right 
hand, and I saw a figure hanging there by the neck. A figure all 
in yellow white, with but one shoe to the feet ; and it hung so, 
that I could see that the faded trimmings of the dress were like 
earthy paper, and that the face was Miss Havisham's, with a 
movement going over the whole countenance as if she were trjang 
to call to me. In the terror of seeing the figure, and in the terror 
of being certain that it had not been there a moment before, I at 
first ran from it, and then ran towards it. And my terror was 
greatest of all when I found no figure there. 

Nothing less than the frosty light of the cheerful sky, the 
sight of people passing beyond the bars of the courtyard gate, and 
the reviving influence of the rest of the bread and meat and beer, 
could have brought me round. Even with those aids, I might not 
have come to myself as soon as I did, but that I saw Estella 
approaching with the keys, to let me out. She would have some 



50 GREAT EXPECTAT10:NS. 

fair reason for looking down upon me, I thought, if she saw me 
frightened ; and she should have no fair reason. 

She gave me a triumphant glance in passing me, as if she 
rejoiced that my hands were so coarse and my boots were so thick, 
and she opened the gate, and stood holding it. I was passing out 
without looking at her, Avhen she touched me with a taunting 
hand. 

" Why don't you cry ? " 

"Because I don't want to." 

"You do," said she. "You have been crying till you are 
half blind, and you are near crying again now." 

She laughed contemptuously, pushed me out, and locked the 
gate upon me. I Avent straight to Mr. Pumblechook's, and was 
immensely relieved to find him not at home. So, leaving word 
with the shopman on what day I was wanted at Miss Havisham's 
again, I set off on the four-mile walk to our forge ; pondering, as 
I went along, on all I had seen, and deeply revolving that I was 
a common labouring-boy ; that my hands were coarse ; that my 
boots were thick ; that I had fallen into a despicable habit of call- 
ing knaves Jacks ; that I was much more ignorant than I had con- 
sidered myself last night, and generally that I v/as in a low-lived 
bad way. 



CHAPTER IX. 

When I reached home, my sister was very curious to know all 
about Miss Havisliam's, and asked a number of questions. And 
I soon found myself getting heavily bumped from behind in the 
nape of the neck and the small of the back, and having my face 
ignominiously shoved against the kitchen wall, because I did not 
answ^er those questions at sufficient length. 

If a dread of not being understood be hidden in the breasts of 
other young people to anything like the extent to which it used 
to be hidden in mine — which I consider probable, as I have no 
particular reason to suspect myself of having been a monstrosity — 
it is the key to many reservations. I felt convinced that if I 
described Miss Havisham's as my eyes had seen it, I should not be 
understood. Not only that, but I felt convinced that Miss Havis- 
ham too would not be understood ; and although she was perfectly 
incomprehensible to me, I entertained an impression that there 
would be something coarse and treacherous in my dragging her as 
she really was (to say nothing of Miss Estella) before the con- 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 67 

templation of Mrs. Joe. Consequently, I said as little as I could, 
and had my face shoved against the kitchen wall. 

The worst of it was that that bullying old Pumblechook, preyed 
upon by a devouring curiosity to be informed of all I had seen 
and heard, came gaping over in his chaise-cart at tea-time, to have 
the details divulged to him. And the mere sight of the torment, 
with liis fishy eyes and mouth open, his sandy hair inquisitively 
on end, and his waistcoat heaving with windy arithmetic, made me 
vicious in my reticence. 

" Well, boy," Uncle Pumblechook began, as soon as he was 
seated in the chair of honour by the fire. " How did you get on 
up town 1 " 

I answered, " Pretty well, sir," and my sister shook her fist at 
me. 

"Pretty well?" Mr. Pumblechook repeated. "Pretty well is 
no answer. Tell us what you mean by pretty well, boy ? " 

Whitewash on the forehead hardens the brain into a state of 
obstinacy perhaps. Anyhow, with whitewash from the wall on 
my forehead, my obstinacy was adamantine. I reflected for some 
time, and then answered as if I had discovered a new idea, "I 
mean pretty well." 

My sister with an exclamation of impatience was going to fly at 
me — I had no shadow of defence, for Joe was busy in the forge 
— when Mr. Pumblechook interposed with " No ! Don't lose 
your temper. Leave this lad to me, ma'am ; leave this lad to 
me." Mr. Pumblechook then turned me towards him, as if he 
were going to cut my hair, and said : 

" First (to get our thoughts in order) : Forty-three pence 1 " 

I calculated the consequences of replying "Four Hundred 
Pound," and finding them against me, went as near the answer as 
I could — which was somewhere about eightpence off". Mr. Pum- 
blechook then put me through my pence-table from " twelve pence 
make one shilling," up to "forty pence make three and four- 
pence," and then triumphantly demanded, as if he had done for 
me, '^JS^ow/ How much is forty-three pence?" To which I 
replied, after a long interval of reflection, " I don't know." And 
I was so aggravated that I almost doubt if I did know. 

Mr. Pumblechook worked his head like a screw to screw it out 
of me, and said, " Is forty-three pence seven and sixpence three 
fardens, for instance 1 " 

" Yes ! " said I. And although my sister instantly boxed my 
ears, it was highly gratifying to me to see that the answer spoilt 
his joke, and brought him to a dead stop. 

" Boy ! What hke is Miss Havisham 1 " Mr. Pumblechook 



58 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

began again when he had recovered ; folding his arms tight on his 
chest and applying the screw. 

"Very tall and dark," I told him. 

" Is she, uncle 1 " asked my sister. 

Mr, Pumblechook winked assent ; from which I at once in- 
ferred that he had never seen Miss Havisham, for she was nothing 
of the kind. 

" Good ! " said Mr. Pumblechook, conceitedly. (" This is the 
way to have him ! We are beginning to hold our own, I think, 
Mum 1 ") 

"I am sure, uncle," returned Mrs. Joe, "I wish you had him 
always : you know so well how to deal with him." 

" Now, boy ! What was she a doing of, when you went in 
to-day ? " asked Mr. Pumblechook. 

"She was sitting," I answered, "in a black velvet coach." 

Mr. Pumblechook and Mrs. Joe stared at one another — as 
they well might — and both, repeated, "In a black velvet coach?" 

"Yes," said I. "And Miss Estella — that's her niece, I think 
— handed her in cake and wine at the coach-window, on a 
gold plate. And we all had cake and wine on gold plates. And I 
got up behind the coach to eat mine, because she told me to." 

" Was anybody else there 1 " asked Mr. Pumblechook. 

" Four dogs," said I. 

" Large or small ? " 

"Immense," said I. "And they fought for veal-cutlets out of 
a silver basket." 

Mr. Pumblechook and Mrs. Joe stared at one another again, in 
utter amazement. I was perfectly frantic — a reckless witness 
under the torture — and would have told them anything. 

" Where was this coach, in the name of gracious ? " asked my 
sister. 

"In Mi-; Havisham's room." They stared again. "But there 
weren't any horses to it." I added this saving clause, in the 
moment of rejecting four richly caparisoned coursers, which I had 
had wild thoughts of harnessing. 

" Can this be possible, uncle 1 " asked Mrs. Joe. " What can the 
boy mean ? " 

" I'll tell you. Mum," said Mr. Pumblechook. " My opinion is, 
it's a sedan-chair. She's flighty, you know — very flighty — quite 
flighty enough to pass her days in a sedan-chair." 

" Did you ever see her in it, uncle ? " asked Mrs. Joe. 

"How could I," he returned, forced to the admission, "when I 
never see her in my life ? Never clapped eyes upon her ! " 

" Goodness, uncle ! And yet you have spoken to her 1 " 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 59 

"Why, don't you know," said Mr. Pumblechook, testily, "that 
when I have been there, I have been took up to the outside of her 
door, and the door has stood ajar, and she has spoken to me that 
way. Don't say you don't know that, Mum. Howsever, the boy 
went tliere to play. What did you play at, boy 1 " 

"We played with flags," I said. (I beg to observe that I think 
of myself with amazement, when I recall the lies I told on this 
occasion.) 

" Flags ! " echoed my sister. 

"Yes," said I. "Estella waved a blue flag, and I waved a red 
one, and Miss Havisham waved one sprinkled all over with little 
gold stars, out at the coach- window. And then we all waved our 
swords and hurrahed." 

"Swords!" repeated my sister. "Where did you get swords 
from?" 

"Out of a cupboard," said I. "And I saw pistols in it — and 
jam — and pills. And there was no daylight in the room, but it 
was all lighted up with candles." 

" That's true. Mum," said Mr. Pumblechook, with a grave nod. 
"That's the state of the case, for that much I've seen myself." 
And then they both stared at me, and I, with an obtrusive show of 
artlessness on my countenance, stared at them, and plaited the 
right leg of my trousers with my right hand. 

If they had asked me any more questions I should undoubtedly 
have betrayed myself, for I was even then on the point of mention- 
ing that there was a balloon in the yard, and should have hazarded 
the statement but for my invention being divided between that 
phenomenon and a bear in the brewery. They were so much 
occupied, however, in discussing the marvels I had already pre- 
sented for their consideration, that I escaped. The subject still 
held them when Joe came in from his work to have a cup of tea. 
To whom my sister, more for the relief of her own mind than for 
the gratification of his, related my pretended experiences. 

Now, when I saw Joe open his blue eyes and roll them all 
round the kitchen in helpless amazement, I was overtaken by 
penitence ; but only as regarded him — not in the least as regarded 
the other two. Towards Joe, and Joe only, I considered myself 
a young monster, while they sat debating what results would come 
to me from Miss Havisham's acquaintance and favour. They had 
no doubt that Miss Havisham would "do something" for me; 
their doubts related to the form that something would take. My 
sister stood out for " property." Mr. Pumblechook was in favour 
of a handsome premium for binding me apprentice to some genteel 
trade — say, the corn and seed trade, for instance. Joe fell into the 



tiO GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

deepest disgrace with both, for offering the bright suggestion that 
I might only be presented with one of the dogs who had fought 
for the veal-cutlets. " If a fool's head can't express better opinions 
than that," said my sister, "and you have got any work to do, you 
had better go and do it." So he went. 

After Mr. Pumblechook had driven off, and when my sister was 
washing up, I stole into tlie forge to Joe, and remained by him 
until he had done for the night. Then I said, "Before the fire 
goes out, Joe, I should like to tell you something." 

"Should you, Pip?" said Joe, drawing his shoeing-stool near 
the forge. " Then tell us. What is it, Pip 1 " 

"Joe," said I, taking hold of his rolled-up shirt sleeve, and 
twisting it between my finger and thumb, "you remember all that 
about Miss Havisham's ? " 

" Remember ? " said Joe. " I believe you ! Wonderful ! " 

" It's a terrible thing, Joe ; it ain't true." 

" What are you telling of, Pip ? " cried Joe, falling back in the 
greatest amazement. " You don't mean to say it's " 

"Yes, I do ; it's lies, Joe." 

"But not all of it? Why sure you don't mean to say, Pip, 

that there was no black welwet co ch ? " For, I stood shaking 

my head. "But at least there was dogs, Pip? Come, Pip," said 
Joe, persuasively, "if there warn't no weal-cutlets, at least there 
was dogs ? " 

"No, Joe." 

" A dog ? " said Joe. " A puppy ? Come ! " 

" No, Joe, there was nothing at all of the kind." 

As I fixed my eyes hopelessly on Joe, Joe contemplated me in 
dismay. " Pip, old chap ! This won't do, old fellow ! I say ! 
Where do you expect to go to ? " 

" It's terrible, Joe ; ain't it ? " 

" Terrible ? " cried Joe. " Awful ! What possessed you ? " 

"I don't know what possessed me, Joe," I replied, letting his 
shirt sleeve go, and sitting down in the ashes at his feet, hanging 
my head ; " but I wish you hadn't taught me to call knaves at 
cards. Jacks ; and I wish my boots weren't so thick nor my hands 
so coarse." 

And then I told Joe that I felt very miserable, and that I hadn't 
been able to explain myself to Mrs. Joe and Pumblechook, who 
were so rude to me, and that there had been a beautiful young lady 
at Miss Havisham's who was dreadfully proud, and that she had 
said I was common, and that I knew I was common, and that I 
wished I was not common, and that the lies had come of it some- 
how, though I didn't know how. 



GREAT EXPECTATION'S. t)J 

This was a case of metaphysics, at least as difficult for Joe to 
deal \vith, as for me. But Joe took the case altogether out of the 
region of metaphysics, and by that means vanquished it. 

"There's one thing you maybe sure of, Pip," said Joe, after 
some rumination, " namely, that lies is lies. Howsever they come, 
they didn't ought to come, and they come from the father of lies, 
and work round to the same. Don't you tell no more of 'em, Pip. 
That ain't the way to get out of being common, old chap. And 
as to being common, I don't make it out at all clear. You are 
oncommon in some things. You're oncommou small. Likewise 
you're a oncommou scholar." 

*' No, I am ignorant and backward, Joe." 

" Why, see what a letter you wrote last night ! Wrote in print 
even ! Pve seen letters — Ah ! and from gentlefolks ! — that I'll 
swear weren't wrote in print," said Joe. 

" I have learnt next to nothing, Joe. You think much of me. 
It's only that." 

"Well, Pip," said Joe, "be it so, or be it son't, you must be a 
common scholar afore you can be a oncommon one, I should hope ! 
The king upon his throne, with his crown upon his 'ed, can't sit 
and write his acts of Parliament in print, without having begun, 
when he were a unpromoted Prince, with the alphabet — Ah ! " 
added Joe, mth a shake of the head that was full of meaning, " and 
begun at A too, and worked his way to Z. And 1 know what that 
is to do, though I can't say I've exactly done it." 

There was some hope in this piece of wisdom, and it rather 
encouraged me. 

" Whether common ones as to callings and earnings," pursued Joe, 
reflectively, "mightn't be the better of continuing for to keep 
company with common ones, instead of going out to play with 
oncommon ones — which reminds me to hope that there were a 
flag, perhaps?" 

" No, Joe." 

" (I'm sorry there weren't a flag, Pip.) Whether that might 
be, or mightn't be, is a thing as can't be looked into now, without 
putting your sister on the Rampage ; and that's a thing not to be 
thought of, as being done intentional. Lookee here, Pip, at what 
is said to you by a true friend. Which this to you the true friend 
say. If you can't get to be oncommon through going straight, 
you'll never get to do it through going crooked. So don't tell no 
more on 'em, Pip, and live well and die happy." 

" You are not angry mth me, Joe ] " 

" No, old chap. But bearing in mind that them were which I 
meantersay of a stunning and outdacious sort — alluding to them 



02 GREAT^ EXPECTATIONS. 

which bordered on weal-cutlets and dog fighting — a sincere well- 
wislier would adwise, Pip, their being dropjDed into your medita- 
tions, when you go upstairs to bed. That's all, old chap, and 
don't never do it no more." 

When I got up to my little room and said my prayers, I did not 
forget Joe's recommendation, and yet my young mind was in that 
disturbed and unthankful state, that I thought long after I laid 
me down, how common Estella would consider Joe, a mere black- 
smith : how thick his boots, and how coarse his hands. I thought 
how Joe and my sister were then sitting in the kitchen, and how 
I had come up to bed from the kitchen, and how Miss Havisham 
and Estella never sat in a kitchen, but were far above the level of 
such common doings. I fell asleep recalling what I " used to do " 
when I was at Miss Havisham's ; as though I had been there 
weeks or months, instead of hours : and as though it were quite 
an old subject of remembrance, instead of one that had risen only 
that day. 

That was a memorable day to me, for it made great changes in 
me. But it is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day 
struck out of it, and think how different its course would have 
been. Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the 
long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never 
have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one 
memorable day. 



CHAPTER X. 

The felicitous idea occurred to me a morning or two later when 
I woke, that the best step I could take towards making myself 
uncommon was to get out of Biddy everything she knew. In 
pursuance of this luminous conception, I mentioned to Biddy when 
I went to Mr. Wopsle's great-aunt's at night, that I had a par- 
ticular reason for wishing to get on in life, and that I should feel 
very much obliged to her if she would impart all her learning to 
me. Biddy, who was the most obliging of girls, immediately said 
she would, and indeed began to carry out her promise within five 
minutes. 

The Educational scheme or Course established by Mr. Wopsle's 
great-aunt may be resolved into the following synopsis. The 
pupils ate apples and put straws down one another's backs, until 
Mr. Wopsle's great-aunt collected her energies, and made an indis- 
criminate totter at them with a birch-rod. After receiving the 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 63 

charge with every mark of derision, the pupils formed in line and 
buzziugly passed a ragged book from hand to hand. The book 
had an alphabet in it, some figures and tables, and a little spell- 
ing — that is to say, it had had once. As soon as this volume 
began to circulate, Mr. Wopsle's great-aunt fell into a state of 
coma ; arising either from sleep or a rheumatic paroxysm. The 
pupils then entered among themselves upon a competitive examina- 
tion on the subject of Boots, with the view of ascertaining who 
could tread the hardest upon whose toes. This mental exercise 
lasted until Biddy made a rush at them and distributed three 
defaced Bibles (shaped as if they had been unskilfully cut off the 
chump-end of something), more illegibly printed at the best than 
any curiosities of literature I have since met with, speckled all 
over with ironmould, and having various specimens of the insect 
world smashed between their leaves. This part of the Course was 
usually lightened by several single combats between Biddy and refrac- 
tory students. When the fights were over, Biddy gave out the 
number of a page, and then we all read aloud what we could — or 
what we couldn't — in a frightful chorus ; Biddy leading with a 
high shrill monotonous voice, and none of us having the least 
notion of, or reverence for, what we were reading about. When 
this horrible din had lasted a certain time, it mechanically awoke 
Mr. Wopsle's great-aunt, who staggered at a boy fortuitously, and 
pulled his ears. This was understood to terminate the Course for 
the evening, and we emerged into the air with shrieks of intellect- 
ual victory. It is fair to remark that there was no prohibition 
against any pupil's entertaining himself with a slate or even with the 
ink (when there was any), but that it was not easy to pursue that 
branch of study in the winter season, on account of the little gen- 
eral shop in Avhich the classes were holden — and which was also 
Mr. Wopsle's gi'eat-aunt's sitting-room and bed-chamber — being 
but faintly illuminated through the agency of one low-spirited dip- 
candle and no snuffers. 

It appeared to me that it would take time to become uncommon 
under these circumstances : nevertheless, I resolved to try it, and 
that very evening Biddy entered on our special agreement, by 
imparting some information from her little catalogue of Prices, 
under the head of moist sugar, and lending me, to copy at home, 
a large old English D which she had imitated from the heading of 
some newspaper, and which I supposed, until she told me what it 
was, to be a design for a buckle. 

Of course there was a public-house in the village, and of course 
Joe liked sometimes to smoke his pipe there. I had received strict 
orders from my sister to call for him at the Three Jolly Bargemen, 



64 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

tliat evening, on my way from school, and bring him home at my 
peril. To the Three Jolly Barge:! "en, therefore, I directed my steps. 

There was a bar at the Jolly Bargemen, with some alarmingly 
long chalk scores in it on the wall at tlie side of the door, wliicli 
seemed to me to be never paid off. They had been there ever 
since I could remember, and had grown more than I had. But 
there was a quantity of chalk about our country, and perhaps the 
people neglected no opportunity of turning it to account. 

It being Saturday night, I found the landlord looking rather 
grimly at these records, but as my business was with Joe and not 
with him, I merely \\Tshed him good evening, and passed into the 
common room at the end of the passage, where there was a bright 
large kitchen fire, and where Joe was smoking his pipe in com- 
pany ^^ith Mr. Wopsle and a stranger. Joe greeted me as usual 
with " Halloa, Pip, old chap ! " and the moment he said that, the 
stranger turned his head and looked at me. 

He was a secret-looking man whom I had never seen before. 
His head was all on one side, and one of his eyes was half shut up, 
as if he were taking aim at something with an invisible gun. He 
had a pipe in his mouth, and he took it out, and, after slowly 
blowing all his smoke away and looking hard at me all the time, 
nodded. So, I nodded, and then he nodded again, and made room 
on the settle beside him that I might sit down there. 

But, as I was used to sit beside Joe whenever I entered that 
place of resort, I said " No, thank you, sir,"' and fell into the space 
Joe made for me on the opposite settle. The strange man, after 
glancing at Joe, and seeing that his attention was otherwise engaged, 
nodded to me again when I had taken my seat, and then rubbed 
his leg — in a veiy odd way, as it struck me. 

"You was saying," said the strange man, turning to Joe, "that 
you was a blacksmith." 

"Yes. I said it, you know," said Joe. 

" What'll you drink, Mr. ? You didn't mention your name, 

by-the-bye." 

Joe mentioned it now, and the strange man called him by it. 

"Whafll you drink, Mr. Gargery? At my expense? To top 
up with 1 " 

"Well," said Joe, "to tell you the truth, I ain't much in the 
habit of drinking at anybody's expense but my own." 

"Habit? No," returned the stranger, "but once and away, and 
on a Saturday night too. Come ! Put a name to it, Mr. Gargery." 

" I wouldn't ^\dsh to be stiff company," said Joe. " Rum." 

" Rum," repeated the stranger. " And will the other gentleman 
originate a sentiment." 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 66 

"Rum," said Mr. Wopsle. 

" Three Rums ! " cried the '•^vauger, calling to the landlord. 
" Glasses round ! " 

"This other gentleman/' observed Joe, by way of introducing 
Mr. Wopsle, " is a gentleman that you would like to hear give it 
out. Our clerk at church." 

" Aha ! " said the stranger, quickly, and cocking his eye at me. 
"The lonely church, right out on the marshes, with the graves 
round it ! " 

" That's it," said Joe. 

The stranger, with a comfortable kind of grunt over his pipe, 
put his legs up on the settle that he had to himself. He wore a 
flapping broad-brimmed traveller's hat, and under it a handkerchief 
tied over his head in the manner of a cap : so that he showed no 
hair. As he looked at the fire, I thought I saw a cunning expres- 
sion, followed by a half-laugh, come into his face. 

" I am not acquainted with this country, gentlemen, but it seems 
a solitary country towards the river." 

"Most marshes is solitary," said Joe. 

" No doubt, no doubt. Do you find any gipsies, now, or tramps, 
or vagrants of any sort, out there 1 " 

"No," said Joe ; " none but a runaway convict now and then. 
And we don't find them, easy. Eh, Mr. Wopsle ? " 

Mr. Wopsle, with a majestic remembrance of old discomfiture, 
assented; but not warmly. 

"Seems you have been out after such?" asked the stranger. 

" Once," returned Joe. " Not that we wanted to take them, 
you understand ; we went out as lookers on ; me and Mr. Wopsle, 
and Pip. Didn't us, Pip ? " 

"Yes, Joe." 

The stranger looked at me again — still cocking his eye, as if he 
were expressly taking aim at me with his invisible gim — and said, 
" He's a likely young parcel of bones that. What is it you call 
him?" 

" Pip," said Joe. 

" Christened Pip ? " 

" No, not christened Pip." 

" Surname Pip 1 " 

" No," said Joe ; " it's a kind of a family name what he gave him- 
self when a infant, and is called by." 

" Son of yours ?" 

"Well," said Joe, meditatively — not, of course, that it could 
be in anywise necessary to consider about it, but because it was 
the way at the Jolly Bargemen to seem to consider deeply about 



66 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

everything that was discussed over pipes ; " well — no. No, he 
ain't." 

"Newy?" said the strange man. 

"Well," said Joe, with the same appearance of profound cogita- 
tion, "he is not — no, not to deceive you, he is not — my nevvy." 

"What the Blue Blazes is he?" asked the stranger. Which 
appeared to me to be an inquiry of unnecessary strength. 

Mr. Wopsle struck in upon that ; as one who knew all about 
relationships, having professional occasion to bear in mind what 
female relations a man might not marry ; and expounded the ties 
between me and Joe. Having his hand in, Mr. Wopsle finished 
off with a most terrifically snarling joassage from Richard the Third, 
and seemed to think he had done quite enough to account for it 
when he added, — " as the poet says." 

And here I may remark that when Mr. Wopsle referred to me, 
he considered it a necessary part of such reference to rumple my 
hair and poke it into my eyes. I cannot conceive why everybody 
of his standing who visited at our house should always have put 
me through the same inflammatory process under similar circum- 
stances. Yet I do not call to mind that I was ever in my earlier 
youth the subject of remark in our social family circle, but some 
large-handed person took some such ophthalmic steps to patronise 
me. 

All tliis while, the strange man looked at nobody but me, and 
looked at me as if he were determined to have a shot at me at last, 
and bring me down. But he said nothing after offering his Blue 
Blazes observation, until the glasses of rum-and- water were brought : 
and then he made his shot, and a most extraordinary shot it 
was. 

It was not a verbal remark, but a proceeding in dumb show, and 
was pointedly addressed to me. He stirred his rum-and-water point- 
edly at me, and he tasted his rum-and-water pointedly at me. And 
he stirred it and he tasted it : not with a spoon that was brought 
to him, but ivith a file. 

He did this so that nobody but I saw the file ; and when he had 
done it, he wiped the file and put it in a breast-j^ocket. I knew it 
to be Joe's file, and I knew that he knew my convict, the moment 
I saw the instnnnent. I sat gazing at him, spellbound. But he 
now reclined on his settle, taking very little notice of me, and talk- 
ing principally about turnips. 

There was a delicious sense of cleaning-up and making a quiet 
pause before going on in life afresh, in our village on Saturday 
nights, which stimulated Joe to dare to stay out half an hour longer 
on Saturdays than at other times. The half hour and the rum-and- 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 67 

water running out together, Joe got up to go, and took me by the 
hand. 

"Stop half a moment, Mr. Gargery," said the strange man. "I 
think I've got a bright new shilling somewhere in my pocket, and 
if I have, the boy shall have it.'' 

He looked it out from a handful of small change, folded it in 
some crumpled paper, and gave it to me. " Yours 1 " said he. 
"Mind! Your own." 

I thanked him, staring at him far beyond the bounds of good 
manners, and holding tight to Joe. He gave Joe good night, and 
he gave Mr. Wopsle good night (who went out with us), and he 
gave me onlj^ a look with his aiming eye — no, not a look, for he 
shut it up, but wonders may be done with an eye by hiding it. 

On the way home, if I had been in the humour for talking, the 
talk must have been all on my side, for Mr. "Wopsle parted from 
us at the door of the Jolly Bargemen, and Joe went all the way 
home with his mouth wide open, to rinse the rum out with as 
much air as possible. But I was in a manner stupefied by this 
turning up of my old misdeed and old acquaintance, and could 
think of nothing else. 

My sister was not in a very bad temper when we presented our- 
selves in the kitchen, and Joe was encouraged by that unusual cir- 
cumstance to tell her about the bright shilling. " A bad un, I'll 
be bound," said Mrs. Joe, triumphantly, " or he wouldn't have given 
it to the boy ? Let's look at it." 

I took it out of the paper, and it proved to be a good one. 
" But what's this 1 " said Mrs. Joe, throwing down the shilling and 
catching up the paper. " Two One-Pound notes ? " 

ISothing less than two fat sweltering one-pound notes that 
seemed to have been on terms of the w^armest intimacy with all 
the cattle markets in the county. Joe caught up his hat again, 
and ran with them to the Jolly Bargemen to restore them to their 
o^^Tler. While he was gone I sat down on my usual stool and 
looked vacantly at my sister, feeling pretty sure that the man 
would not be there. 

Presently, Joe came back, saying that the man was gone, but 
that he, Joe, had left word at the Three Jolly Bargemen concern- 
ing the notes. Then my sister sealed them up in a piece of paper, 
and put them under some dried rose-leaves in an ornamental tea- 
pot on the top of a press in the state parlour. There they remained 
a nightmare to me many and many a night and day. 

I had sadly broken sleep when I got to bed, through thinking of 
the strange man taking aim at me with his invisible gun, and of 
the guiltily coarse and common thing it was, to be on secret terms 



68 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

of conspiracy \\ath convicts — a feature in my low career that I 
had i3reviously forgotten. I was haunted by the file too. A dread 
possessed me that when I least expected it, the file would reappear. 
I coaxed myself to sleep by thinking of Miss Havisham's next 
Wednesday ; and in my sleep I saw the file coming at me out of a 
door, without seeing who held it, and I screamed myself awake. 



CHAPTER XI. 

At the appointed time I returned to Miss Havisham's, and my 
hesitating ring at the gate brought out Estella. She locked it 
after admitting me, as she had done before, and again preceded me 
into the dark passage where her candle stood. She took no notice 
of me until she had the candle in her hand,- when she looked over 
her shoulder, superciliously saying, "You are to come this way 
to-day," and took me to quite another part of the house. 

The passage was a long one, and seemed to pervade the whole 
square basement of the Manor House. We traversed but one side 
of the square, however, and at the end of it she stopped and put 
her candle down and opened a door. Here, the daylight reappeared, 
and I found myself in a small paved courtyard, the opposite side 
of which was formed by a detached dwelling-house, that looked as 
if it had once belonged to the manager or head clerk of the extinct 
brewery. There was a clock in the outer wall of this house. 
Like the clock in Miss Havisham's room, and like Miss Havis- 
ham's watch, it had stopped at twenty minutes to nine. 

We went in at the door, which stood open, and into a gloomy 
room with a low ceiling, on the ground floor at the back. There 
was some company in the room, and Estella said to me as she 
joined it, "You are to go and stand there, boy, till you are wanted." 
" There " being the vindow, I crossed to it, and stood " there," in 
a very uncomfortable state of mind, looking out. 

It opened to the ground, and looked into a most miserable cor- 
ner of the neglected garden, upon a rank ruin of cabbage-stalks, 
and one box-tree that had been clipped round long ago, like a pud- 
ding, and had a new growth at the top of it, out of shape and of a 
different colour, as if that part of the pudding had stuck to the 
saucepan and got burnt. This was my homely thought, as I con- 
templated the box-tree. There had been some light snow, over- 
night, and it lay nowhere else to my knowledge ; but, it had not 
quite melted from the cold shadow of this bit of garden, and the 
wind caught it up in little eddies and threw it at the window, as 
if it pelted me for coming there. 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. OU 

I divined that my coming had stopped conversation in the room, 
and that its other occupants were looking at me, I could see noth- 
ing of the room except the shining of the fire in the window glass, 
but I stiftened in all my joints with the consciousness that I was 
under close inspection. 

There were three ladies in the room and one gentleman. Before 
I had been standing at the window five minutes, they somehow 
conveyed to me that they were all toadies and humbugs, but that 
each of them pretended not to know that the others were toadies 
and humbugs : because the admission that he or she did know it, 
would have made him or her out to be a toady and humbug. 

They all had a listless and dreary air of waiting somebody's 
pleasure, and the most talkative of the ladies had to speak quite 
rigidly to suppress a yawn. This lady, whose name was Camilla, 
very nuich reminded me of my sister, with the difterence that she 
was older, and (as I found when I caught sight of her) of a blunter 
cast of features. Indeed, when I knew her better I began to think 
it was a mercy she had any features at all, so very blank and high 
was the dead wall of her face. 

" Poor dear soul ! " said this lady, with an abruptness of manner 
quite my sister's. " Nobody's enemy but his own ! " 

" It would be much more commendable to be somebody else's 
enemy," said the gentleman; "far more natural." 

"Cousin Raymond," observed another lady, "we are to love our 
neighbour," 

"Sarah Pocket," returned Cousin Raymond, "if a man is not 
his own neighbour, who is 1 " 

Miss Pocket laughed, and Camilla laughed and said (checking a 
yawn), " The idea ! " But I thought they seemed to think it rather 
a good idea too. The other lady, who had not spoken yet, said 
gravely and emphatically, " Veiy true ! " 

" Poor soul ! " Camilla presently went on (I knew they had all 
been looking at me in the mean time), " he is .so very strange ! 
Would any one believe that when Tom's wife died, he actually 
could not be induced to see the importance of the children's having 
the deepest of trimmings to their mourning ? ' Good Lord ! ' says 
he, ' Camilla, what can it signify so long as the poor bereaved little 
things are in black 1 ' So like Matthew ! The idea ! " 

"Good points in him, good points in him," said Cousin Ray- 
mond ; " Heaven forbid I should deny good points in him ; but he 
never had, and he never will have, any sense of the proprieties." 

" You know I was obliged," said Camilla, " I was obliged to be 
firm. I said, ' It will not do, for the credit of the family.' I 
told him that, without deep trimmings, the lamily was disgraced. 



70 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

I cried about it from breakfast till dinner, I injured my digestion. 
And at last he liung out in his violent way, and said, with a D, 
' Then do as you like.' Thank Goodness it will always be a con- 
solation to me to know that I instantly went out in a pouring rain 
and bought the things." 

'■''He paid for them, did he not?" asked Estella. 

" It's not the question, my dear child, who paid for them," 
returned Camilla, "/bought them. And I shall often think of 
that with peace, when I wake up in the night." 

The ringing of a distant bell, combined with the echoing of some 
cry or call along the passage by which I had come, interrupted the 
conversation and caused Estella to say to me, " Now, boy ! " On 
my turning round, they all looked at me with the utmost con- 
tempt, and, as I went out, I heard Sarah Pocket say, " Well I am 
sure ! What next ! " and Camilla add, with indignation, " Was 
there ever such a fancy ! The i-de-a ! " 

As we were going with our candle along the dark passage, 
Estella stopped all of a sudden, and, facing round, said in her 
taunting manner, with her face quite close to mine : 

"Well?" 

"Well, miss," I answered, almost falling over her and checking 
myself. 

She stood looking at me, and of course I stood looking at her. 

" Am I pretty ? " 

"Yes ; I think you are very pretty." 

"Am I insulting?" 

" Not so much so as you were last time," said I. 

" Not so much so ? " 

" No." 

She fired when she asked the last question, and she slapped my 
face with such force as she had, when I answered it. 

"Now?" said she. "You little coarse monster, what do you 
think of me now ? " 

"I shall not tell you." 

" Because you are going to tell upstairs. Is that it ? " 

"No," said I, " that's not it." 

" Why don't you ciy again, you little wretch ? " 

" Because I'll never cry for you again," said I. Which was, I 
suppose, as false a declaration as ever was made ; for I was inwardly 
crying for her then, and I know what I know of the pain she cost 
me afterwards. 

We went on our way upstairs after this episode; and, as we 
were going up, we met a gentleman groping his way dowm. 

"Whom have we here?" asked the gentleman, stopping and 
looking at me. 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 71 

"A boy," said Estella. 

He was a burly man of an exceedingly dark complexion, with an 
exceedingly large head and a corresponding large hand. He took 
my chin in his large hand and turned up my face to have a look at 
me by the light of the candle. He was prematurely bald on the 
top of his head, and had bushy black eyebrows that wouldn't lie 
down, but stood up bristling. His eyes were set very deep in his 
head, and were disagreeably sharp and suspicious. He had a large 
watch-chain, and strong black dots where his beard and whiskers 
would have been if he had let them. He was nothing to me, and 
I could have had no foresight then, that he ever would be anything 
to me, but it happened that I had this opportunity of observing 
him well. 

" Boy of the neighbourhood ? Hey ? " said he. 

"Yes, sir," said I. 

" How do you come here ? " 

" Miss Havisham sent for me, su'," I explained. 

" Well ! Behave yourself. I have a pretty large experience of 
boys, and you're a bad set of fellows. Now mind ! " said he, biting 
the side of his great forefinger as he frowned at me, "you behave 
yourself ! " 

With these words he released me — which I was glad of, for his 
hand smelt of scented soap — and went his way downstairs. I 
wondered whether he could be a doctor ; but no, I thought ; he 
couldn't be a doctor, or he would have a quieter and more persuasive 
manner. There was not much time to consider the subject, for we 
were soon in Miss Havisham's room, where she and everything else 
were just as I had left them. Estella left me standing near the 
door, and I stood there until Miss Havisham cast her eyes upon 
me from the dressing-table. 

" So ! " she said, without being startled or surprised ; " the days 
have worn away, have they ? " 

" Yes, ma'am. To-day is " 

" There, there, there ! " mth the impatient movement of her 
fingers. " I don't want to know. Are you ready to play 1 " 

I was obliged to answer in some confusion, " I don't think I am, 
ma'am." 

" Not at cards again % " she demanded with a searching look. 

"Yes, ma'am ; I could do that, if I was wanted." 

" Since this house strikes you old and gi'ave, boy," said Miss 
Havisham, impatiently, "and you are unwUhng to play, are you 
willing to work % " 

I could answer this inquiiy mth a better heart than I had been 
able to find for the other question, and I said I was quite wilhng. 



72 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

"Then go into that opposite room," said she, pointing at the 
door behind me with her withered hand, "and wait there till I 
come." 

I crossed the staircase landing, and entered the room she indi- 
cated. From that room, too, the daylight was completely excluded, 
and it had an airless smell that was oppressive. A fire had been 
lately kindled in the damp old-fashioned grate, and it was more 
disposed to go out than to burn up, and the reluctant smoke which 
hung in the room seemed colder than the clearer air — like our 
own marsh mist. Certain wintry branches of candles on the high 
chimneypiece faintly lighted the chamber ; or, it would be more 
expressive to say, faintly troubled its darkness. It was spacious, 
and I dare say had once been handsome, but every discernible thing 
in it was covered with dust and mould, and dropping to pieces. 
The most prominent object was a long table with a tablecloth 
spread on it, as if a feast had been in preparation when the house 
and the clocks all stopped together. An dpergne or centre-piece 
of some kind was in the middle of this cloth ; it was so heavily 
overhung with cobwebs that its form was quite undistinguishable ; 
and, as I looked along the yellow expanse out of which I remember 
its seeming to grow, like a black fungus, I saw speckled-legged 
spiders with blotchy bodies running home to it, and running out 
from it, as if some circumstance of the greatest public importance 
had just transpired in the spider community. 

I heard the mice too, rattling behind the panels, as if the same 
occurrence were important to their interests. But, the blackbeetles 
took no notice of the agitation, and groped about the hearth in a 
ponderous elderly way, as if they were shortsighted and hard of 
hearing, and not on terms with one another. 

These crawling things had fascinated my attention, and I was 
watching them from a distance, when Miss Havisham laid a hand 
upon my shoulder. In her other hand she had a crutch-headed 
stick on which she leaned, and she looked like the Witch of the 
place. 

"This," said she, pointing to the long table with her stick, "is 
where I will be laid when I am dead. They shall come and look 
at me here." 

With some vague misgiving that she might get upon the table 
then and there and die at once, the complete realisation of the 
ghastly waxwork at the Fair, I shrank under her touch. 

"What do you think that is?" she asked me, again pointing 
with her stick ; " that, where those cobwebs are 1 " 

"I can't guess what it is, ma'am." 

" It's a great cake. A bride-cake. Mine ! " 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. I'd 

She looked all round the room in a glaring manner, and then 
said, leaning on me while her hand twitched my shoidder, " Come, 
come, come ! Walk me, walk me ! " 

I made out from this, that the work I had to do, was to walk 
Miss Havisham round and round the room. Accordingly, I started 
at once, and she leaned upon my shoulder, and we went away at a 
pace that might have been an imitation (founded on my first impulse 
under that roof) of Mr. Pumblechook's chaise-cart. 

She was not physically strong, and after a little time said, 
" Slower ! " Still, we went at an impatient fitful speed, and as 
we went, she twitched the hand upon my shoulder, and v/orked 
her mouth, and led me to believe that we were going fast because 
her thoughts went fast. After a while she said, " Call Estella ! " 
so I went out on the landing and roared that name as I had done 
on the previous occasion. When her light appeared, I returned to 
Miss Havisham, and we started away again round and round the 
room. 

If only Estella had come to be a spectator of our proceedings, I 
should have felt sufficiently discontented ; but, as she brought with 
her the three ladies and the gentleman whom I had seen below, I 
didn't know what to do. In my politeness I would have stopped ; 
but. Miss Havisham twitched my shoulder, and Ave posted on — 
with a shame-faced consciousness on my part that they would think 
it Avas all my doing. 

"Dear Miss Havisham," said Miss Sarah Pocket. "HowAvell 
you look ! " 

" I do not," returned Miss Havisham. " I am yellow skin and 
bone." 

Camilla brightened when Miss Pocket met with this rebuff; 
and she murmured, as she plaintively contemplated Miss Havisham, 
" Poor dear soul ! Certainly not to be expected to look well, poor 
thing. The idea ! " 

" And how are pou ? " said Miss Havisham to Camilla. As we 
were close to Camilla then, I would have stopped as a matter of 
course, only Miss Havisham wouldn't stop. We swept on, and I 
felt that I was highly obnoxious to Camilla. 

"Thank you, Miss Havisham," she returned, "I am as well as 
can be expected." 

"Why, what's the matter with you?" asked Miss Havisham, 
with exceeding sharpness. 

" Nothing worth mentioning," replied Camilla. " I don't wish 
to make a display of my feelings, but I have habitually thought of 
you more in the night than I am quite equal to." 

"Then don't think of me," retorted Miss Havisham. 



74 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

"Very easily said!" remarked Camilla, amiably repressing a 
sob, while a hitch came into her upper lip, and her tears over- 
flowed. " Raymond is a witness what ginger and sal volatile I 
am obliged to take in tlie night. Raymond is a witness what 
nervous jerkings I have in my legs. Chokings and nervous jerk- 
ings, however, are nothing new to me when I think with anxiety 
of those I love. If I could be less affectionate and sensitive, I 
should have a better digestion and an iron set of nerves. I am 
sure I wish it could be so. But as to not thinking of you in the 
night — the idear ! " Here, a burst of tears. 

The Raymond referred to, I understood to be the gentleman 
present, and him I understood to be Mr. Camilla. He came to 
the rescue at this point, and said in a consolatory and compliment- 
ary voice, " Camilla, my dear, it is well known that your family 
feelings are gradually undermining you to the extent of making 
one of your legs shorter than the other." 

"I am not aware," observed the grave lady whose voice I had 
heard but once, " that to think of any person is to make a great 
claim upon that person, my dear." 

Miss Sarah Pocket, whom I now saw to be a little dry brovv^n 
corrugated old woman, with a small face that might have been 
made of walnut shells, and a large mouth like a cat's without the 
whiskers, supported this position by saying, " No, indeed, my dear. 
Hem ! " 

"Thinking is easy enough," said the grave lady. 

" What is easier, you know ? " assented Miss Sarah Pocket. 

" Oh, yes, yes ! " cried Camilla, whose fermenting feelings ap- 
peared to rise from her legs to her bosom. " It's all very true ! 
It's a weakness to be so affectionate, but I can't help it. No doubt 
my health would be much better if it was otherwise, still I wouldn't 
change my disposition if I could. It's the cause of much suffering, 
but it's a consolation to know I possess it, when I wake up in the 
night." Here another burst of feeling. 

Miss Havisham and I had never stopped all this time, but kept 
going round and round the room : now, brushing against the skirts 
of the visitors : now, gi\ing them the whole length of the dismal 
chamber. 

" There's Matthew ! " said Camilla. " Never mixing with any 
natural ties, never coming here to see how Miss Havisham is ! I 
have taken to the sofa with my stay-lace cut, and have lain there 
hours, insensible, with my head over the side, and my hair all down, 
and my feet I don't know where " 

("Much higher than your head, my love," said Mr. Camilla.) 

" I have gone off into that state, hours and hours, on account 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 75 

of Matthew's strange and inexplicable conduct, and nobody has 
thanked me." 

" Really I must say I should think not ! " interposed the grave 
lady. 

" You see, my dear," added Miss Sarah Pocket (a blandly vicious 
personage), "the question to put to yourself is, who did you expect 
to thank you, my love 1 " 

"Without expecting any thanks, or anything of tlie sort," 
resumed Camilla, " I have remained in that state hours and liours, 
and Raymond is a witness of the extent to which I have choked, 
and what the total inefficacy of ginger has been, and I have been 
heard at the pianoforte- tuner's across the street, where the poor 
mistaken children have even supposed it to be pigeons cooing at 

a distance — and now to be told " Here Camilla put her 

hand to her throat, and began to be quite chemical as to the for- 
mation of new combinations there. 

When this same Matthew was mentioned. Miss Havisham stopped 
me and herself, and stood looking at the speaker. This change 
had a great influence in bringing Camilla's chemistry to a sudden 
end. 

"Matthew will come and see me at last," said Miss Havisham, 
sternly, " when I am laid on that table. That will be his place — 
there," striking the table with her stick, "at my head! And 
yours will be there ! And your husband's there ! And Sarah 
Pocket's there ! And Georgiana's there ! Now you all know 
where to take your stations when you come to feast upon me. 
And now go ! " 

At the mention of each name, she had struck the table with her 
stick in a new place. She now said, " Walk me, walk me ! " and 
we went on again. 

"I suppose there's nothing to be done," exclaimed Camilla, 
" but comply and depart. It's something to have seen the object 
of one's love and duty, even for so short a time. I shall think of 
it with a melancholy satisfaction when I wake up in the night. I 
wish Matthew could have that comfort, but he sets it at defiance. 
I am determined not to make a display of my feelings, but it's 
very hard to be told one wants to feast on one's relations — as if 
one was a Giant — and to be told to go. The bare idea ! " 

Mr. Camilla interposing, as Mrs. Camilla laid her hand upon 
her heaving bosom, that lady assumed an unnatural fortitude of 
manner which I supposed to be expressive of an intention to drop 
and choke when out of view, and kissing her hand to Miss Havis- 
ham, was escorted forth. Sarah Pocket and Georgiana contended 
who should remain last ; but, Sarah was too knowing to be out- 



76 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

done, and ambled round Georgiana with that artful slipperiness, 
that the latter was obliged to take precedence. Sarah Pocket then 
made her separate effect of departing with " Bless you, Miss Havis- 
ham dear ! " and with a smile of forgiving pity on her walnut-shell 
countenance for the weaknesses of the rest. 

AVhile Estella was away lighting them down, Miss Havisham 
still walked with her hand on my shoulder, but more and more 
slowly. At last she stopped before the fire, and said, after mutter- 
ing and looking at it some seconds : 

"This is my birthday, Pip." 

I was going to wish her many happy returns, when she lifted 
her stick. 

" I don't suffer it to be spoken of. I don't suffer those who were 
here just now, or any one, to speak of it. They come here on the 
day, but they dare not refer to it." 

Of course / made no further effort to refer to it. 

" On this day of the year, long before you were born, this heap 
of decay," stabbing with her crutched stick at the pile of cobwebs 
on the table, but not touching it, "was brought here. It and 
I have worn away together. The mice have gnawed at it, and 
sharper teeth than teeth of mice have gnawed at me." 

She held the head of her stick against her heart as she stood 
looking at the table ; she in her once white dress, all yellow and 
withered ; the once white cloth all yellow and withered ; every- 
thing around, in a state to crumble under a touch. 

"AVhen the ruin is complete," said she, with a ghastly look, 
" and when they lay me dead, in my bride's dress on the bride's 
table — which shall be done, and which will be the finished curse 
upon him — so much the better if it is done on this day ! " 

She stood looking at the table as if she stood looking at her own 
figure lying there. I remained quiet. Estella returned, and she too 
remained quiet. It seemed to me that we continued thus a long 
time. In the heavy air of the room, and the heavy darkness that 
brooded in its remoter corners, I even had an alarming fancy that 
Estella and I might presently begin to decay. 

At length, not coming out of her distraught state by degrees, but 
in an instant, Miss Havisham said, " Let me see you two play at 
cards ; why have you not begun 1 " With that, we returned to her 
room, and sat down as before ; I was beggared, as before ; and 
again, as before, Miss Havisham watched us all the time, directed 
my attention to Estella's beauty, and made me notice it the more 
by trying her jewels on Estella's breast and hair. 

Estella, for her part, likewise treated me as before ; except that 
she did not condescend to speak. When we had played some half- 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 77 

dozen games, a day was appointed for my return, and I was taken 
down into the yard to be fed in the former dog-like manner. 
There, too, I was again left to wander about as I liked. 

It is not much to the purpose whether a gate in that garden 
wall which I had scrambled up to peep over on the last occasion 
was, on that last occasion, open or shut. Enough that I saw no 
gate then, and that I saw one now. As it stood open, and as 
I knew that Estella had let the visitors out — for, she had 
returned with the keys in her hand — I strolled into the garden, 
and strolled all over it. It was quite a wilderness, and there were 
old melon-frames and cucumber-frames in it, which seemed in their 
decline to have produced a spontaneous growth of weak attempts 
at pieces of old hats and boots, with now and then a weedy offshoot 
into the likeness of a battered saucepan. 

When I had exhausted the garden and a greenhouse with 
nothing in it but a fallen-down grape-vine and some bottles, I 
found myself in the dismal corner upon which I had looked out 
of window. Never cj[uestioning for a moment that the house was 
now empty, I looked in at another window, and found myself, to 
my great surprise, exchanging a broad stare wdth a pale young 
gentleman with red eyelids and light hair. 

This pale young gentleman quickly disappeared, and reappeared 
beside me. He had been at his books when I had found myself 
staring at him, and I now saw that he was inky. 

" Halloa ! " said he, " young fellow ! " 

Halloa being a general observation which I had usually observed 
to be best answered by itself, / said " Halloa ! " politely omitting 
young fellow. 

" Who let you in % " said he. 

" Miss EsteUa." 

" Who gave you leave to prowl about % " 

"Miss Estella." 

"Come and fight," said the pale young gentleman. 

What could I do but follow him? I have often asked myself 
the question since : but, what else could I do ? His manner was 
so final and I was so astonished, that I followed where he led, as 
if I had been under a spell. 

"Stop a minute, though," he said, wheeling round before we 
had gone many paces. " I ought to give you a reason for fighting, 
too. There it is ! " In a most irritating manner he instantly slapped 
his hands against one another, daintily flung one of his legs up behind 
him, pulled my hair, slapped his hands again, dipped his head, and 
butted it into my stomach. 

The bull-like proceeding last mentioned, besides that it was 



78 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

unquestionably to be regarded in the light of a liberty, was particu- 
larly disagreeable just after bread and meat. I therefore hit out 
at him, and was going to hit out again, when he said, "Aha! 
Would you 1 " and began dancing backwards and forwards in a 
manner quite unparalleled within my limited experience. 

" Laws of the game ! " said he. Here, he skipped from his left 
leg on to his right. " Regular rules ! " Here, he skipped from 
his right leg on to his left. " Come to the ground, and go through 
the preliminaries ! " Here, he dodged backwards and forwards, 
and did all sorts of things while I looked helplessly at him. 

I was secretly afraid of him when I saw him so dexterous ; but, 
I felt morally and physically convinced that his light head of hair 
could have had no business in the pit of my stomach, and that 
I had a right to consider it irrelevant when so obtruded on my 
attention. Therefore, I followed him without a word, to a retired 
nook of the garden, formed by the junction of two walls and 
screened by some rubbish. On his asking me if I was satisfied 
with the ground, and on my replying Yes, he begged my leave 
to absent himself for a moment, and quickly returned with a 
bottle of water and a sponge dipped in vinegar. "Available for 
both," he said, placing these against the wall. And then fell to 
pulling off, not only his jacket and waistcoat, but his shirt too, in 
a manner at once light-hearted, business-like, and bloodthirsty. 

Although he did not look very healthy — having pimples on his 
face, and a breaking out on his mouth — these dreadful prepara- 
tions quite appalled me. I judged him to be about my own age, 
but he AA'as much taller, and he had a way of spinning himself 
about that was full of appearance. For the rest, he was a young 
gentleman in a grey suit (when not denuded for battle), with his 
elbows, knees, wrists, and heels considerably in advance of the 
rest of him as to development. 

My heart failed me when I saw him squaring at me with every 
demonstration of mechanical nicety, and eyeing my anatomy as if 
he were minutely choosing his bone. I never have been so sur- 
prised in my life, as I was when I let out the first blow, and saw 
him lying on his back, looking up at me with a bloody nose and 
his face exceedingly foreshortened. 

But, he was on his feet directly, and after sponging himself with 
a great show of dexterity began squaring again. The second great- 
est surprise I have ever had in my life was seeing him on his back 
again, looking up at me out of a black eye. 

His spirit inspired me with great respect. He seemed to have 
no strength, and he never once hit me hard, and he was always 
knocked down ; but, he would be up again in a moment, sponging 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 79 

himself or drinking out of the water-bottle, with the greatest satis- 
faction in seconding himself according to form, and then came at me 
with an air and a show that made me believe he really was going to 
do for me at last. He got heavily bruised, for I am sorry to record 
that the more I hit him, the harder I hit him ; but, he came up 
again and again and again, until at last he got a bad fall with the 
back of his head against the wall. Even after that crisis in our 
affairs, he got up and turned round and round confusedly a few 
times, not knowing where I was ; but finally went on his knees to 
his sponge and threw it up : at the same time panting out, "That 
means you have won." 

He seemed so brave and innocent, that although I had not pro- 
posed the contest, I felt but a gloomy satisfaction in my victory. 
Indeed, I go so far as to hope that I regarded myself while dressing, 
as a species of savage young wolf, or other wild beast. However, 
I got dressed, darkly wiping my sanguinary face at intervals, and I 
said, " Can I help you ? " and he said, " No thankee," and I said, 
"Good afternoon," and he said, "Same to you." 

When I got into the courtyard, I found Estella waiting with the 
keys. But, she neither asked me where I had been, nor why I had 
kept her waiting ; and there was a bright flush upon her face, as 
though something had happened to delight her. Instead of going 
straight to the gate, too, she stepped back into the passage, and 
beckoned me. 

" Come here ! You may kiss me if you like." 

I kissed her cheek as she turned it to me. I think I would have 
gone through a great deal to kiss her cheek. But, I felt that the 
kiss was given to the coarse common boy as a piece of money might 
have been, and that it was worth nothing. 

What with the birthday visitors, and what with the cards, and 
what with the fight, my stay had lasted so long, that when I neared 
home the light on the spit of sand off" the point on the marshes was 
gleaming against a black night-sky, and Joe's furnace was flinging 
a path of fire across the road. 



CHAPTER XII. 

My mind grew very uneasy on the subject of the pale young gen- 
tleman. The more I thought of the fight, and recalled the pale 
young gentleman on his back in various stages of puffy and incrim- 
soned countenance, the more certain it appeared that something 
would be done to me. I felt that the pale young gentleman's blood 



80 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

was on my head, and that the Law would avenge it. Without hav- 
ing any definite idea of the penalties I had incurred, it was clear to 
me that village boys could not go stalking about the country, rav- 
aging the houses of gentlefolks and pitching into the studious youth 
of England, -without laying themselves open to severe punishment. 
For some days, I even kept close at home, and looked out at the 
kitchen door with the greatest caution and trepidation before going 
on an errand, lest the ofiicers of the County Jail should pounce 
upon me. The pale young gentleman's nose had stained my trou- 
sers, and I tried to wash out that evidence of my guilt in the dead 
of night. I had cut my knuckles against the pale young gentle- 
man's teeth, and I twisted my imagination into a thousand tangles, 
as I devised incredible ways of accounting for that damnatory cir- 
cumstance when I should be haled before the Judges. 

When the day came round for my return to the scene of the deed 
of violence, my terrors reached their height. Whether myrmidons 
of Justice, specially sent down from London, would be lying in am- 
bush behind the gate ? Whether Miss Havisham, preferring to take 
personal vengeance for an outrage done to her house, might rise in 
those grave-clothes of hers, draw a pistol, and shoot me dead? 
Whether suborned boys — a numerous band of mercenaries — 
might be engaged to fall upon me in the brewery, and cuff me 
until I was no more 1 It was high testimony to my confidence in 
the spirit of the pale j^oung gentleman, that I never imagined him 
accessory to these retaliations ; they always came into my mind as 
the acts of injudicious relatives of his, goaded on by the state of his 
visage and an indignant sympathy with the family features. 

However, go to Miss Havisham's I must, and go I did. And 
behold ! nothing came of the late struggle. It was not alluded to 
in any way, and no pale young gentleman was to be discovered on 
the premises. I found the same gate open, and I explored the gar- 
den, and even looked in at the windows of the detached house ; but, 
my view was suddenly stopped by the closed shutters within, and 
all was lifeless. Only in the corner where the combat had taken 
place, could I detect any evidence of the young gentleman's exist- 
ence. There were traces of his gore in that spot, and I covered 
them with garden-mould from the eye of man. 

On the broad landing between Miss Havisham's own room and 
that other room in which the long table was laid out, I saw a gar- 
den-chair — a light cliair on wheels, that you pushed from behind. 
It had been placed there since my last visit, and I entered, that 
same day, on a regular occupation of pushing Miss Havisham in 
this chair (when she was tired of walking with her hand upon my 
shoulder) round her own room, and across the landing, and round 



GKEAT EXrECTATIONS. 81 

the other room. Over and over and over again, we would make 
these journeys, and sometimes they would last as long as three 
hours at a stretch. I insensibly fall into a general mention of these 
journeys as numerous, because it was at once settled that I should 
return every alternate day at noon for these purposes, and because 
I am now going to sum up a period of at least eight or ten months. 

As we began to be more used to one another. Miss Havisham 
talked more to me, and asked me such questions as what had I 
learnt and what was I going to be ? I told her I was going to be 
apprenticed to Joe, I believed ; and I enlarged upon my knowing 
nothing and wanting to know everything, in the hope that she 
might offer some help towards that desirable end. But, she did 
not; on the contrary, she seemed to prefer my being ignorant. 
Neither did she ever give me any money or anything but my daily 
dinner — nor even stipulate that I should be paid for my services. 

Esteila was always about, and always let me in and out, but 
never told me I might kiss her again. Sometimes, she would 
coldly tolerate me ; sometimes, she would condescend to me ; some- 
times, she would be quite familiar ^vith me ; sometimes, she would 
tell me energetically that she hated me. Miss Havisham would 
often ask me in a whisper, or when we were alone, "Does she grow 
prettier and prettier, Pip ? " And when I said Yes (for indeed she 
did), would seem to enjoy it greedily. Also, when we played at 
cards Miss Havisham would look on, with a miserly relish of Es- 
tella's moods, whatever they were. And sometimes, when her moods 
were so many and so contradictory of one another that I was puz- 
zled what to say or do. Miss Havisham would embrace her with 
lavish fondness, murmuring something in her ear that sounded like 
"Break their hearts, my pride and hope, break their hearts and 
have no mercy ! " 

There was a song Joe used to hum fragments of at the forge, of 
which the burden was Old Clem. This was not a very ceremoni- 
ous way of rendering homage to a patron saint ; but I believe Old 
Clem stood in that relation toward smiths. It was a song that 
imitated the measure of beating upon iron, and was a mere lyrical 
excuse for the introduction of Old Clem's respected name. Thus, 
you were to hammer boys round — Old Clem! With a thump 
and a sound — Old Clem ! . Beat it out, beat it out — Old Clem ! 
With a chnk for the stout — Old Clem ! Blow the fire, blow the 
fire — Old Clem ! Koaring dryer, soaring higher — Old Clem ! 
One day soon after the appearance of the chair. Miss Ha^dsham 
suddenly saying to me, with the impatient movement of her fin- 
gers, " There, there, there ! Sing ! " I was surprised into crooning 
this ditty as I pushed her over the floor. It happened so to 



82 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

catch her fancy that she took it up in a low brooding voice as if 
she were singing in her sleep. After that, it became customary 
with us to have it as we moved about, and Estella would often 
join in ; though the whole strain was so subdued, even when there 
were three of us, that it made less noise in the grim old house than 
the lightest breath of wind. 

What could I become with these surroundings ? How could my 
character fail to be influenced by them ? Is it to be wondered at 
if my thoughts were dazed, as my eyes were, when I came out into 
the natural light from the misty yellow rooms ? 

Perhaps I might have told Joe about the pale young gentleman, 
if I had not previously been betrayed into those enormous inven- 
tions to which I had confessed. Under the circumstances, I felt 
that Joe could hardly fail to discern in the pale young gentleman, 
an appropriate passenger to be put into the black velvet coach ; 
therefore, I said nothing of him. Besides : that shrinking from 
having Miss Havisham and Estella discussed, which had come upon 
me in the beginning, grew much more potent as time went on. I 
reposed complete confidence in no one but Biddy : but, I told poor 
Biddy everything. Why it came natural for me to do so, and why 
Biddy had a deep concern in everything I told her, I did not know 
then, though I think I know now. 

Meanwhile, councils went on in the kitchen at home, fraught 
with almost insupportable aggravation to my exasperated spirit. 
That ass, Pumblechook, used often to come over of a night for the 
purpose of discussing my prospects with my sister ; and I really 
do believe (to this hour with less penitence than I ought to feel), 
that if these hands could have taken a linchpin out of his chaise- 
cart, they would have done it. The miserable man was a man of 
that confined stolidity of mind, that he could not discuss my pros- 
pects without having me before him — as it were, to operate upon 
— and he woidd drag me up from my stool (usually by the collar) 
where I was quiet in a corner, and, putting me before the fire as 
if I were going to be cooked, would begin by saying, " Now, Mum, 
here is this boy ! Here is this boy which you brought up by 
hand. Hold up your head, boy, and be for ever grateful unto 
them which so did do. Now, Mum, with respections to this boy ! " 
And then he would rumple my hair the wrong way — which from 
my earliest remembrance, as already hinted, I have in my soul de- 
nied the right of any fellow-creature to do — and would hold me 
before him by the sleeve : a spectacle of imbeciUty only to be 
equalled by himself 

Then, he and my sister would pair oflf in such nonsensical specu- 
lations about Miss Havisham, and about what she would do with 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 83 

me and for me, that I used to want — quite painfully — to burst 
into spiteful tears, fly at Pumblechook, and pummel him all over. 
In these dialogues, my sister spoke to me as if she were morally 
wrenching one of my teeth out at every reference ; while Pumble- 
chook himself, self-constituted my patron, would sit supervising me 
with a depreciatory eye, like the architect of my fortunes who 
thought himself engaged in a very unremunerative job. 

In these discussions, Joe bore no part. But he was often 
talked at, while they were in progress, by reason of Mrs. Joe's 
perceiving that he was not favourable to my being taken from the 
forge. I was fully old enough now, to be apprenticed to Joe ; and 
when Joe sat with the poker on liis knees thoughtfully raking out 
the ashes between the lower bars, my sister would so distinctly 
construe that innocent action into opposition on his part, that she 
would dive at him, take the poker out of his hands, shake him, 
and put it away. There was a most irritating end to every one of 
these debates. All in a moment, with nothing to lead up to it, 
my sister would stop herself in a yawn, and catching sight of me 
as it were mcidentally, would swoop upon me with " Come ! there's 
enough of you! You get along to bed; you\Q given trouble 
enough for one night, I hope ! " As if I had besought them as a 
favour to bother my life out. 

We went on in this way for a long time, and it seemed likely 
that we should continue to go on in this way for a long time, when, 
one day. Miss Havisham stopped short as she and I were walking, 
she leaning on my shoulder ; and said with some displeasure : 

" You are growing tall, Pip ! " 

I thought it best to hint, through the medium of a meditative 
look, that this might be occasioned by circumstances over which I 
had no control. 

She said no more at the time ; but, she presently stopped and 
looked at me again ; and presently again ; and after that, looked 
frowning and moody. On the next day of my attendance, when 
our usual exercise was over, and I had landed her at her dressing- 
table, she stayed me with a movement of her impatient fingers : 

" Tell me the name again of that blacksmith of yours." 

"Joe Gargery, ma'am." 

" Meaning the master you were to be apprenticed to ? " 

"Yes, Miss Havisham." 

"You had better be apprenticed at once. Would Gargery come 
here with you, and bring your indentures, do you think ? " 

I signified that I had no doubt he would take it as an honour 
to be asked. 

" Then let him come." 



84 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

" At any particular time, Miss Havisham 1 " 

" There, there ! I know nothing about times. Let him come 
soon, and come alone with you." 

When I got home at night, and dehvered this message for Joe, 
my sister " went on the Rampage," in a more alarming degree than 
at any previous period. She asked me and Joe whether we sup- 
posed she was door-mats under our feet, and how we dared to use 
her so, and what company we graciously thought she was fit for ? 
When she had exhausted a torrent of such inquiries, she threw a 
candlestick at Joe, burst into a loud sobbing, got out the dust-pan 
— which was always a very bad sign — put on her coarse apron, 
and began cleaning up to a terrible extent. Not satisfied with a 
dry cleaning, she took to a pail and scrubbing-brush, and cleaned 
us out of house and home, so that we stood shivering in the back- 
yard. It was ten o'clock at night before we ventured to creep in 
again, and then she asked Joe why he had not married a Negress 
Slave at once 1 Joe off'ered no answer, poor felloAv, but stood feel- 
ing his whiskers and looking dejectedly at me, as if he thought it 
really might have been a better speculation. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

It was a trial to my feelings, on the next day but one, to see 
Joe arraying himself in his Sunday clothes to accompany me to 
Miss Havisham's. However, as he thought his court-suit neces- 
sary to the occasion, it was not for me to tell him that he looked 
far better in his working dress; the rather, because I knew he 
made himself so dreadfully uncomfortable, entirely on my account, 
and that it was for me he pulled up his shirt-collar so very high 
behind, that it made the hair on the crown of his head stand up 
like a tuft of feathers. 

At breakfast-time, my sister declared her intention of going to 
town with us, and being left at Uncle Pumblecliook's, and called 
for "when we had done with our fine ladies" — a way of putting 
the case, from which Joe appeared inclined to augur the worst. 
The forge was shut up for the day, and Joe inscribed in chalk 
upon the door (as it was his custom to do on the very rare occa- 
sions when he was not at work) the monosyllable hout, accompa- 
nied by a sketch of an arrow supposed to be flying in the direction 
he had taken. 

We walked to town, my sister leading the way in a very large 
beaver bonnet, and carrying a basket like the Great Seal of Eng- 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 85 

land in plaited straw, a pair of pattens, a spare shawl, and an 
umbrella, though it was a fine bright day. I am not quite clear 
whether these articles were carried penitentially or ostentatiously; 
but, I rather think they were displayed as articles of property — 
much as Cleopatra or any other sovereign lady on the Rampage 
might exhibit her wealth in a pageant or procession. 

When we came to Pumblechook's, my sister bounced in and left 
us. As it was almost noon, Joe and I held straight on to Miss 
Havisham's house. Estella opened the gate as usual, and, the 
moment she appeared, Joe took his hat off and stood weighing it 
by the brim in both his hands : as if he had some urgent reason in 
his mind for being particular to half a quarter of an ounce. 

Estella took no notice of either of us, but led us the way that I 
knew so well. I followed next to her, and Joe came last. When I 
looked back at Joe in the long passage, he was still weighing his 
hat with the greatest (|ire, and was coming after us in long strides 
on the tips of his toes. 

Estella told me we were both to go in, so I took Joe by the coat- 
cuff and conducted him into Miss Havisham's presence. She was 
seated at her dressing-table, and looked round at us immediately. 

"Oh!" said she to Joe. "You are the husband of the sister 
of this boy?" 

I could hardly have imagined dear old Joe looking so unlike 
himself or so like some extraordinary bird ; standing, as he did, 
speechless, with his tuft of feathers ruffled, and his mouth open as 
if he wanted a worm. 

"You are the husband," repeated Miss Havisham, "of the sis- 
ter of this boy?" 

It was very aggravating; but, throughout the interview, Joe 
persisted in addressing Me instead of Miss Havisham. 

"Which I meantersay, Pip," Joe now observed, in a manner 
that was at once expressive of forcible argumentation, strict confi- 
dence, and great politeness, "as I hup and married your sister, 
and I were at the time what you might call (if you was any ways 
inclined) a single man." 

" Well ! " said Miss Havisham. " And you have reared the boy, 
with the intention of taking him for your apprentice ; is that so, 
Mr. Gargery?" 

"You know, Pip," replied Joe, "as you and me were ever 
friends, and it were looked for'ard to betwixt us, as being calc'lated 
to lead to larks. Not but what, Pip, if you had ever made objec- 
tions to the business — such as its being open to black and sut, or 
such-like — not but what they would have been attended to, don't 
you see ? " 



m GliE AT EXrECTATlONS. 

"Has the boy," said Miss Havisham, "ever made any objec- 
tion ? Does he like the trade ? " 

"Which it is well beknown to yourself, Pip," returned Joe, 
strengthening his former mixture of argumentation, confidence, and 
politeness, " that it were the wish of your own hart." (I saw the 
idea suddenly break upon him that he would adapt his epitaph to 
the occasion, before he went on to say) "And there weren't no 
objection on your part, and Pip it were the great wish of your 
hart ! " 

It was quite in vain for me to endeavour to make him sensible 
that he ought to speak to Miss Havisham. The more I made 
faces and gestures to him to do it, the more confidential, argument- 
ative, and polite, he persisted in being to Me. 

" Have you brought his indentures with you ? " asked Miss 
Havisham. 

" Well, Pip, you know," replied Joe, ^ if that were a little 
unreasonable, "you yourself see me put 'em in my 'at, and there- 
fore you know as they are here." With which he took them out, 
and gave them, not to Miss Havisham, but to me. I am afraid I 
was ashamed of the dear good fellow — I knotv I was ashamed of 
him — when I saw that Estella stood at the back of Miss Havis- 
ham's chair, and that her eyes laughed mischievously. I took the 
indentures out of his hand and gave them to Miss Havisham. 

"You expected," said Miss Havisham, as she looked them over, 
" no premium with the boy ? " 

" Joe ! " I remonstrated ; for he made no reply at all. " Why 
don't you answer " 

" Pip," returned Joe, cutting me short as if he were hurt, "which 
I mcantersay that were not a question rc(|uiring a answer betwixt 
yourself and me, and which you know the answer to be full well 
No. You know it to be No, Pip, and wherefore should I say it ? " 

Miss Havisham glanced at him as if she understood what he 
really was, better than I had thought possible, seeing what he was 
there ; and took up a little bag from the table beside her. 

"Pip has earned a premium here," she said, "and here it is. 
There are five-and-twenty guineas in this bag. Give it to your 
master, Pip?" 

As if he were absolutely out of his mind with the wonder awak- 
ened in him by lier strange figure and the strange room, Joe, even 
at this pass, persisted in addressing me. 

" This is very liberal on your part, Pip," said Joe, " and it is as 
such received and grateful welcome, though never looked for, far 
nor near nor nowheres. And now, old chap," said Joe, conveying 
to me a sensation, first of burning and then of freezing, for I felt 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 87 

as if that familiar expression were applied to Miss Havisham; " and 
now, old chap, may we do our duty ! May you and me do our duty, 
both on us by one and another, and by them which your liberal 
present — have — conweyed — to be — for the satisfaction of mind 
— of — ^ them as never — "here Joe showed that he felt he had 
fallen into frightful difficulties, until he triumphantly rescued him- 
self with the words, " and from myself far be it ! " These words 
had such a round and convincing sound for him that he said them 
twice. 

" Good bye, Pip ! " said Miss Havisham. " Let them out, 
Estella." 

" Am I to come again, Miss Havisham ? " I asked. 

" No. Gargery is your master now. Gargery ! One word ! " 

Thus calling him back as I went out of the door, I heard her 
say to Joe, in a distinct emphatic voice, " The boy has been a good 
boy here, and that is his reward. Of course, as an honest man, 
you will expect no other and no more." 

How Joe got out of the room, I have never been able to deter- 
mine ; but, I know that when he did get out he was steadily pro- 
ceeding upstairs instead of coming down, and was deaf to all 
remonstrances until I went after him and laid hold of him. In 
another minute we were outside the gate, and it was locked, and 
Estella was gone. When we stood in the daylight alone again, 
Joe backed up against a wall, and said to me, " Astonishing ! " 
And there he remained so long, saying "Astonishing" at intervals, 
so often, that I began to think his senses were never coming back. 
At length, he prolonged his remark into " Pip, I do assure you 
this is as-TON-ishing ! " and so, by degrees, became conversational 
and able to walk away. 

I have reason to think that Joe's intellects were brightened by 
the encounter they had passed througli, and that on our way to 
Pumblechook's, he invented a subtle and deep design. My reason 
is to be found in what took place in Mr. Pumblechook's parlour : 
where, on our presenting ourselves, my sister sat in conference with 
that detested seedsman. 

" Well ! " cried my sister, addressing us both at once. " And 
what's happened to you ? I wonder you condescended to come 
back to such poor society as this, I am sure I do ! " 

"Miss Havisham," said Joe, with a fixed look at me, like an 
effort of remembrance, " made it wery partick'ler that we should 
give her — were it compliments or respects, Pip % " 

"Compliments," I said. 

"Which that were my own belief," answered Joe — "her com- 
pliments to Mrs. J. Gargery " 



88 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

" Much good they'll do me ! " observed my sister : but rather 
gratified too. 

"And wishing," pursued Joe, with another fixed look at me, 
like another effort of remembrance, " that the state of Miss Havis- 
ham's elth were sitch as would have — allowed, were it, Pip?" 

" Of her having the pleasure," I added. 

"Of ladies' company," said Joe. And drew a long breath. 

" Well ! " cried my sister, with a mollified glance at Mr. Pumble- 
chook. " She might have had the politeness to send that message 
at first, but it's better late than never. And what did she give 
young Rantipole here 1 " 

"She giv' him," said Joe, "nothing." 

Mrs. Joe was going to break out, but Joe went on. 

"What she giv'," said Joe, "she giv' to his friends. 'And by 
his friends,' were her explanation, 'I mean into the hands of his 
sister, Mrs. J. Gargery.' Them were her words ; ' Mrs. J. Gargery.' 
She mayn't have know'd," added Joe, with an appearance of 
reflection, "whether it were Joe or Jorge." 

My sister looked at Pumblechook : who smoothed the elbows of 
his wooden arm-chair, and nodded at her and at the fire as if he 
had known all about it beforehand. 

"And how much have you got?" asked my sister, laughing. 
Positively, laughing ! 

" What would present company say to ten pound ? " demanded 
Joe. 

"They'd say," returned my sister curtly, "pretty well. Not 
too much, but pretty well." 

" It's more than that, then," said Joe. 

That fearful impostor, Pumblechook, immediately nodded, and 
said, as he rubbed the arms of his chair : " It's more than that. 
Mum." 

" Why, you don't mean to say " began my sister. 

"Yes I do, Mum," said Pumblechook; "but wait a bit. Go 
on, Joseph. Good in you ! Go on ! " 

"What would present company say," proceeded Joe, "to 
twenty pound ? " 

"Handsome would be the word," returned my sister. 

"Well then," said Joe, "it's more than twenty pound." 

That abject hypocrite, Pumblechook, nodded again, and said 
with a patronising laugh, "It's more than that. Mum. Good 
again ! Follow her up, Joseph ! " 

" Then to make an end of it," said Joe, delightedly handing the 
bag to my sister ; " it's five-and-twenty pound." 

"It's five-and-twenty pound, Mum," echoed that basest of 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 89 

swindlers, Pumblechook, rising to shake hands with her ; " and 
it's no more than your merits (as I said when my opinion was 
asked), and I wish you joy of the money ! " 

If the villain had stopped here, his case would have been suffi- 
ciently awful, but he blackened his guilt by proceeding to take me 
into custody, with a right of patronage that left all his former 
criminality far behind. 

" Now you see, Joseph and wife," said Mr. Pumblechook, as he 
took me by the arm above the elbow, "I am one of them that 
always go right through with what they've begun. This boy must 
be bound out of hand. That's my way. Bound out of hand." 

".Goodness knows. Uncle Pumblechook," said my sister (grasp- 
ing the money), "we're deeply beholden to you." 

"Never mind me, Mum," returned that diabolical comchandler. 
"A pleasure's a pleasure all the world over. But this boy, you 
know : we must have him bound. I said I'd see to it — to tell 
you the truth." 

The Justices were sitting in the Town Hall near at hand, 
and we at once went over to have me bound apprentice to Joe 
in the Magisterial presence. I say, we went over, but I was pushed 
over by Pumblechook, exactly as if I had that moment picked a 
pocket or fired a rick; indeed, it was the general impression in 
Court that I had been taken red-handed ; for, as Pumblechook 
shoved me before him through the crowd, I heard some people 
say, "What's he done?" and others, "He's a young 'un, too, but 
looks bad, don't he ? " One person of mild and benevolent aspect 
even gave me a tract ornamented with a woodcut of a malevolent 
young man fitted up with a perfect sausage-shop of fetters, and 
entitled. To be read in my Cell. 

The Hall was a queer place, I thought, with higher pews in it 
than a church — and with people hanging over the pews looking 
on — and with mighty Justices (one with a powdered head) lean- 
ing back in chairs, with folded arms, or taking snufi^, or going to 
sleep, or writing, or reading the newspapers — and with some shin- 
ing black portraits on the walls, which my unartistic eye regarded 
as a composition of hardbake and sticking-plaister. Here, in a 
comer, my indentures were duly signed and attested, and I was 
" bound ; " Mr. Pumblechook holding me all the while as if we 
had looked in on our way to the scaffold, to have those little 
preliminaries disposed of. 

When we had come out again, and had got rid of the boys who 
had been put into great spirits by the expectation of seeing me 
publicly tortured, and who were much disappointed to find that 
my friends were merely rallying round me, we went back to Pum- 



90 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

blcchook's. And there my sister became so excited by the twenty- 
five guineas, that notliing would serve her but we must have 
a dinner out of that whidfell, at the Bhie Boar, and tliat Mr. Pum- 
blechook must go over in his chaise-cart, and bring the Hubbies 
and Mr. Wopsle. 

It was agreed to be done ; and a most melancholy day I passed. 
For, it inscrutably appeared to stand to reason, in the minds of the 
whole company, that I was an excrescence on the entertainment. 
And to make it worse, they all asked me from time to time — in 
short, whenever they had nothing else to do — why I didn't enjoy 
myself? And what could I possibly do then, but say that I was 
enjoying myself — when I wasn't ! 

However, they w^ere grown up and had their own way, and made 
the most of it. That swindling Pumblechook, exalted into the be- 
neficent contriver of the whole occasion, actually took the top of 
the table ; and, when he addressed them on the subject of my being 
bound, and had fiendishly congratulated them on my being liable 
to imprisonment if I played at cards, drank strong liquors, kept late 
hours or bad company, or indulged in other vagaries which the form 
of my indentures appeared to contemplate as next to inevitable, he 
placed me standing on a chair beside him to illustrate his remarks. 

My only other remembrances of the great festival are, That they 
wouldn't let me go to sleep, but w^henever they saw me dropping 
oflF, w^oke me up and told me to enjoy myself. That, rather late in 
the evening Mr. Wopsle gave us Collins's ode, and threw his blood- 
stain'd sword in thunder down, with such effect that a waiter came 
in and said, " The Commercials underneath sent up their compli- 
ments, and it wasn't the Tumblers' Arms." That, they were all 
in excellent spirits on the road home, and sang Lady Fair ! Mr. 
Wopsle taking the bass, and asserting with a tremendously strong 
voice (in reply to the inquisitive bore who leads that piece of music 
in a most impertinent manner, by wanting to know all about every- 
body's private affairs) that he vs'as the man with liis white locks 
flowing, and that he was upon the whole the weakest pilgrini going. 

Finally, I remember that when I got into my little bedroom, 
I was truly wretched, and had a strong conviction on me that I 
should never like Joe's trade. I had liked it once, but once was 
not now. 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 91 



CHAPTER XIV. 

It is a most miserable thing to feel ashamed of home. There 
may be black ingratitude in the thing, and the punishment may 
be retributive and well deserved ; but, that it is a miserable thing, 
I can testify. 

Home had never been a very pleasant place to me, because of 
my sister's temper. But, Joe had sanctified it, and I believed in 
it. I had believed in the best parlour as a most elegant saloon ; I 
had believed in the front door, us a mysterious portal of the Temple 
of State whose solemn opening was attended with a sacrifice of 
roast fowls ; I had believed in the kitchen as a chaste though not 
magnificent apartment ; I had believed in the forge as the glowing 
road to m^anhood and independence. Within a single year all this 
was changed. Now, it was all coarse and common, and I would 
not have had Miss Havisham and Estella see it on any account. 

How much of my ungracious condition of mind may have been 
my own fault, how much Miss Havisham's, how much my sister's, 
is now of no moment to"."ne or to any one. The change was made 
in me ; the thing was done. Well or ill done, excusably or inex- 
cusably, it was done. 

Once, it had seemed to me that when I should at last roll up my 
shirt-sleeves and go into the forge, Joe's 'prentice, I should be dis- 
tinguished and happy. Now the reality was in my hold, I only 
felt that I was dusty with the dust of the small coal, and that I 
had a weight upon my daily remembrance to which the anvil was a 
feather. There have been occasions in my later life (I suppose as 
in most lives) when I have felt for a time as if a thick curtain had 
fallen on all its interest and romance, to shut me out from anything 
save dull endurance any more. jSTever has that curtain dropped so 
heavy and blank, as when my way in life lay stretched out straight 
before me through the newly-entered road of apprenticeship to Joe. 

I remember that at a later period of my "time," I used to stand 
about the churchyard on Sunday evenings, when night was falling, 
comparing my own perspective with the windy marsh view, and 
making out some likeness between them by thinking how flat and 
low both were, and how on both there came an unknown way and a 
dark mist and then the sea. I was quite as dejected on the first 
working-day of my apprenticeship as in that after-time ; but I am 
glad to know that I never breathed a murmur to Joe while my 
indentures lasted. It is about the only thing I am glad to know 
of myself in that connection. 

For, though it includes what I proceed to add, all the merit of 



92 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

what I proceed to add was Joe's. It was not because I was faith- 
ful, but because Joe was faithful, that I never ran away and went 
for a soldier or a sailor. It was not because I had a strong sense 
of the virtue of industry, but because Joe had a strong sense of 
the virtue, of industry, that I worked with tolerable zeal against the 
grain. It is not jiossible to know how far the influence of any ami- 
able honest-hearted duty-doing man flies out into the world; but 
it is very possible to know how it has touched one's self in going 
by, and I know right well that any good that intermixed itself 
with my apprenticeship came of plain contented Joe, and not of 
restless aspiring discontented me. 

What I wanted, who can say ? How can / say, when I never 
knew ? What I dreaded was, that in some unlucky hour I, being 
at my grimiest and commonest, should lift up my eyes and see 
Estella looking in at one of the wooden windows of the forge. I 
was haunted by the fear that she would, sooner or later, find me out, 
with a black face and hands, doing the coarsest part of my work, 
and would exult over me and despise me. Often after dark, when I 
was pulling the bellows for Joe, and we were singing Old Clem, and 
when the thought how we used to sing it at Miss Havisham's w^ould 
seem to show me Estella's face in the fire, with her pretty hair flut- 
tering in the wind and her eyes scorning me, — often at such a time I 
would look towards those panels of black night in the wall which the 
wooden windows then were, and would fancy that I saw her just 
drawing her face away, and would believe that she had come at last. 

After that, when we went in to supper, the place and the meal 
would have a more homely look than ever, and I would feel more 
ashamed of home than ever, in my own ungracious breast. 



CHAPTER XV. 

As I was getting too big for Mr. Wopsle's great-aunt's room, my 
education under that preposterous female terminated. Not, how- 
ever, until Biddy had imparted to me everything she knew, from 
the little catalogue of prices, to a comic song she had once bought 
for a halfpenny. Although the only coherent part of the latter 
piece of literature were the opening lines. 

When I went to Lunnon town sirs, 

Too rul loo rul 

Too rul loo rul 
Wasn't I done very brown sirs ? 

Too rul loo rul 

Too rul loo rul 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 93 

— still, in niy desire to be wiser, I got this composition by heart 
with the utmost gravity ; nor do I recollect that I questioned its 
merit, except that I thought (as I still do) the amount of Too rul 
somewhat in excess of the poetry. In my hunger for information, 
I made proposals to Mr. Wopsle to bestow some intellectual crumbs 
upon me ; with which he kindly complied. As it turned out, how- 
ever, that he only wanted me for a dramatic lay-figure, to be con- 
tradicted and embraced and wept over and bullied and clutched 
and stabbed and knocked about in a variety of ways, I soon declined 
that course of instruction; though not until Mr. Wopsle in his 
poetic fury had severely mauled me. 

Whatever I acquired, I tried to impart to Joe. This statement 
sounds so well, that I cannot in my conscience let it pass unex- 
plained. I wanted to make Joe less ignorant and common, that he 
might be worthier of my society and less open to Estella's reproach. 

The old Battery out on the marshes was our place of study, and 
a broken slate and a short piece of slate pencil were our educational 
implements : to which Joe always added a pipe of tobacco. I 
never knew Joe to remember anything from one Sunday to another, 
or to acquire, under my tuition, any piece of information whatever. 
Yet he would smoke his pipe at the Battery with a far more saga- 
cious air than anywhere else — even with a learned air — as if he 
considered himself to be advancing immensely. Dear fellow, I hope 
he did. 

It was pleasant and quiet, out there with the sails on the river 
passing beyond the earthwork, and sometimes, when the tide was low, 
looking as if they belonged to sunken ships that were still sailing on 
at the bottom of the water. Whenever I watched the vessels stand- 
ing out to sea with their white sails spread, I somehow thought of 
Miss Havisham and Estella ; and whenever the light struck aslant, 
afar off, upon a cloud or sail or green hill-side or water-line, it was just 
the same. — Miss Havisham and Estella and the strange house and 
the strange life appeared to have something to do with everything 
that was picturesque. 

One Sunday when Joe, greatly enjoying his pipe, had so plumed 
himself on being "most awful dull," tliat I had given him up for 
the day, I lay on the earthwork for some time with my chin on my 
hand, descrying traces of Miss Havisham and Estella all over the 
prospect, in the sky and in the water, until at last I resolved to 
mention a thought concerning them that had been much in my 
head. 

" Joe," said I ; " don't you think I ought to pay Miss Havisham 
a visit ? " 

"Well, Pip," returned Joe, slowly considering. "What for?" 



94 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

" What for, Joe ? Wliat is any visit made for 1 " 

"There is some wisits p'r'aps," said Joe, "as for ever remains 
open to the question, Pip. But in regard of wisiting Miss Havis- 
ham. She might think you wanted something — expected some- 
thing of her." 

" Don't you think I might say that I did not, Joe ? " 

" You might, old chap," said Joe. " And she might credit it. 
Similarly, she mightn't." 

Joe felt, as I did, that he had made a point there, and he pulled 
hard at liis pipe to keep himself from weakening it by repetition. 

"You see, Pip," Joe pursued, as soon as he was past that danger, 
" Miss Havisham done the handsome thing by you. When Miss 
Havisham done the handsome thing by you, she called me back to 
say to me as that were all." 

"Yes, Joe. I heard her." 

"All," Joe repeated, very emphatically. 

"Yes, Joe. I tell you, I heard her." 

" Which I meantersay, Pip, it might be that her meaning were 
— Make a end on it ! — As you was ! — Me to the North, and you 
to the South ! — Keep in sunders ! " 

I had thought of that too, and it was very far from comforting 
to me to find that he had thought of it ; for it seemed to render it 
more probable. 

" But, Joe." 

"Yes, old chap." 

" Here am I, getting on in the first year of my time, and, since 
the day of my being bound I have never thanked Miss Havisham, 
or asked after her, or shown that I remember her." 

" That's tnie, Pip ; and unless you was to turn her out a set of 
shoes all four round — and which I meantersay as even a set of 
shoes all four round might not act acceptable as a present in a total 
wacancy of hoofs " 

" I don't mean that sort of remembrance, Joe ; I don't mean a 
present." 

But Joe had got the idea of a present in his head and must harp 
upon it. "Or even," said he, "if you was helped to knocking her 
up a new chain for the front door — or say a gross or two of shark- 
headed screws for general use — - or some light fancy article, such as 
a toasting-fork when she took her muffins — or a gridiron when she 
took a sprat or such like " 

"I don't mean any present at all, Joe," I interposed. 

" Well," said Joe, still harping on it as though I had particularly 
pressed it, " if I was yourself, Pip, I wouldn't. No, I would not. 
For what's a door-chain when she's got one always up ? And shark- 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 95 

headers is open to misrepresentations. And if it was a toasting- 
fork, you'd go into brass and do yourself no credit. And the 
oncommonest workman can't show himself oncommon in a gridiron 
— for a gridiron is a gridiron," said Joe, steadfastly impressing it 
upon me, as if he were endeavouring to rouse me from a fixed 
delusion, "and you may haim at what you like, but a gridiron it 
will come out, either by your leave or again your leave, and you 
can't help yourself " 

"My dear Joe," I cried in desperation, taking hold of his coat, 
" don't go on in that way. I never thought of making Miss Havis- 
ham any present." 

" No, Pip," Joe assented, as if he had been contending for that 
all along; "and what I say to you is, you are right, Pip." 

" Yes, Joe ; but what I wanted to say, was, that as we are 
rather slack just no^v, if you would give me a half-holiday to-morrow, 
I think I would go up-town and make a call on Miss Est — 
Havisham." 

"Which her name," said Joe, gravely, "ain't Estavisham, Pip, 
unless she have been rechris'ened." 

" I know, Joe, I know. It was a slip of mine. What do you 
think of it, Joe?" 

In brief, Joe thought that if I thought well of it, he thought 
well of it. But, he was particular in stipulating that if I were not 
received witli cordiality, or if I were not encouraged to repeat my 
visit as a visit which had no ulterior object, but was simply one of 
gratitude for a favour received, then this experimental trip should 
have no successor. By these conditions I promised to abide. 

Now, Joe kept a journeyman at weekly wages whose name was 
Orlick. He pretended that his Christian name was Dolge — a clear 
impossibility — but he was a fellow of that obstinate disposition 
that I believe him to have been the prey of no delusion in this 
particular, but wilfully to have imposed that name upon the village 
as an affront to its understanding. He was a broad-shouldered 
loose-limbed swarthy fellow of great strength, never in a hurry, and 
always slouching. He never even seemed to come to his work on 
purpose, but Avould slouch in as if by mere accident ; and when he 
went to tlie Jolly Bargemen to eat his dinner, or went away at night, 
he would slouch out, like Cain or the Wandering Jew, as if he had no 
idea where he was going, and no intention of ever coming back. 
He lodged at a sluice-keeper's out on the marshes, and on working- 
days would come slouching from liis hermitage, with his hands in his 
pockets and his dinner loosely tied in a bundle round his neck and 
dangling on his back. On Sundays he mostly lay all day on sluice- 
gates, or stood against ricks and barns. He always slouched, 



06 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

locomotively, with his eyes on the ground ; and, ^vhen accosted or 
otherwise required to raise them, he looked up in a half resentful, 
half puzzled -way, as though the only thought he ever had, was, 
that it was rather an odd and injurious fact that he should never be 
thinking. 

This morose journeyman had no liking for me. When I was 
very small and timid, he gave me to understand that the Devil 
lived in a black corner of the forge, and that he knew the fiend 
very well : also that it was necessary to make up the fire, once in 
seven years, with a live boy, and that I might consider myself fuel. 
When I became Joe's 'prentice, Orlick was perhaps confirmed in 
some suspicion that I should displace him ; howbeit, he liked me 
still less. Not that he ever said anything, or did anything, openly 
importing hostility ; I only noticed that he always beat his sparks 
in my direction, and that whenever I sang Old Clem, he came in 
out of time. 

Dolge Orlick was at work and present, next day, when I reminded 
Joe of my half-holiday. He said nothing at the moment, for he 
and Joe had just got a piece of hot iron between them, and I was 
at the bellows ; but by-and-bye he said, leaning on his hammer : 

" Now, master ! Sure you're not going to favour only one of us. 
If Young Pip has a half-holiday, do as much for Old Orlick." I 
suppose he was about five-and-twenty, but he usually spoke of him- 
self as an ancient person. 

"Why, what'll you do with a half-holiday, if you get it?" said 
Joe. 

" What'll / do with it 1 What'll he do with it ? I'll do as much 
with it as him," said Orlick. 

" As to Pip, he's going up-town," said Joe. 

"Well then, as to Old Orlick, he's a going up-town," retorted 
that worthy. "Two can go up-town. Tain't only one wot can 
go up-town." 

"Don't lose your temper," said Joe. 

" Shall if I like," growled Orlick. " Some and their up-towning ! 
Now, master ! Come. No favouring in this shop. Be a man ! " 

The master refusing to entertain the subject until the journey- 
man was in a better temper, Orlick plunged at the furnace, drew 
out a red-hot bar, made at me with it as if he were going to run it 
through my body, whisked it round my head, laid it on the anvil, 
hammered it out — as if it were I, I thought, and the sparks were 
my spirting blood — and finally said, when he had hammered him- 
self hot and the iron cold, and he again leaned on his hammer ; 

" Now, master ! " 

" Are you all right now V demanded Joe. 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 97 

"Ah! I am all right," said gruff Old Orlick. 

" Then, as in general you stick to your work as well as most 
men," said Joe, "let it be a half-holiday for all." 

My sister had been standing silent in the yard, Avithin hearing — 
she was a most unscrupulous spy and listener — and she instantly 
looked in at one of the windows. 

" Like you, you fool ! " said she to Joe, " giving holidays to great 
idle hulkers like that. You are a rich man, upon my life, to waste 
wages in that way. I wish / was his master ! " 

"You'd be everybody's master if you durst," retorted Orlick, 
with an ill-favoured grin. 

("Let her alone," said Joe.) 

" I'd be a match for all noodles and all rogues," returned my 
sister, beginning to work herself into a mighty rage. "And I 
couldn't be a match for the noodles, without being a match for 
your master, who's the dunder-headed king of the noodles. And I 
couldn't be a match for the rogues, without being a match for you, 
who are the blackest-looking and the worst rogue between this 
and France. Now ! " 

"You're a foul shrew, Mother Gargery," growled the journey- 
man. "If that makes a judge of rogues, you ought to be a 
good'un." 

("Let her alone, ^^ill you?" said Joe.) 

"What did you say?" cried my sister, beginning to scream. 
"What did you say? What did that fellow Orlick say to me, 
Pip ? What did he call me, with my husband standing by ? ! 

! ! " Each of these exclamations was a shriek ; and I must 
remark of my sister, what is equally true of all the violent women 

1 have ever seen, that passion was no excuse for her, because it is 
undeniable that instead of lapsing into passion, she consciously and 
deliberately took extraordinary pains to force herself into it, and 
became blindly furious by regular stages; "what was the name 
that he gave me before the base man who swore to defend me ? 
0! Hold me! 0!" 

" Ah-h-h ! " growled the journeyman, between his teeth, " I'd 
hold you, if you was my wife. I'd hold you under the pump, and 
choke it out of you." 

("I tell you, let her alone," said Joe.) 

" ! To hear him ! " cried my sister, with a clap of her hands 
and a scream together — which was her next stage. " To hear the 
names he's giving me ! That Orlick ! In my own house ! Me, a 
married woman ! With my husband standing by ! ! ! " Here 
my sister, after a fit of clappings and screamings, beat her hands 
upon her bosom and upon her knees, and threw her cap off, and 




OLD ORLICK AMONG THE CINDERS. 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 99 

pulled her hair down — which were the last stages on her road to 
frenzy. Being by this time a perfect Fury and a complete success, 
she made a dash at the door, which I had fortunately locked. 

What could the wretched Joe do now, after his disregarded 
parenthetical interruptions, but stand up to his journeyman, and 
ask him what he meant by interfering betwixt himself and Mrs. 
Joe ; and further whether he was man enough to come on ? Old 
Orlick felt that the situation admitted of nothing less than coming 
on, and was on his defence straightway; so, without so much as 
pulling off their singed and burnt aprons, they went at one another, 
like two giants. But, if any man in that neighbourhood could 
stand up long against Joe, I never saw the man. Orlick, as if he 
had been of no more account than the pale young gentleman, was 
very soon among the coal-dust, and in no hurry to come out of it. 
Then, Joe unlocked the door and picked up my sister, who had 
dropped insensible at the window (but who had seen the fight first 
I think), and who was carried into the house and laid down, and 
who was recommended to revive, and would do nothing but struggle 
and clench her hands in Joe's hair. Then came that singular calm 
and silence which succeed all uproars ; and then with the vague 
sensation which I have always connected with such a lull — namely, 
that it was Sunday, and somebody was dead — I went upstairs to 
dress myself. 

When I came down again, I found Joe and Orlick sweeping up, 
without any other traces of discomposure than a slit in one of 
Orlick's nostrils, which was neither expressive nor ornamental. A 
pot of beer had appeared from the Jolly Bargemen, and they were 
sharing it by turns in a peaceable manner. The lull had a sedative 
and philosophical influence on Joe, who followed me out into the 
road to say, as a parting observation that might do me good, " On 
the Rampage, Pip, and off the Rampage, Pip ; — such is Life ! " 

With what absurd emotions (for, we think the feelings that are 
very serious in a man quite comical in a boy) I found myself again 
going to Miss Havisham's, matters little here. Nor, how I passed 
and repassed the gate many times before I could make up my mind 
to ring. Nor, how I debated whether I should go away without 
ringing ; nor, how I should undoubtedly have gone, if my time had 
been my own, to come back. 

Miss Sarah Pocket came to the gate. No Estella. 

"How, then? You here again?" said Miss Pocket. "What 
do you want ? " 

When I said that I only came to see how Miss Havisham was, 
Sarah evidently deliberated whether or no she should send me 
about my business. But, unwilling to hazard the responsibility. 



100 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

she let me in, and presently brought the sharp message that I was 
to " come up." 

Everything was unchanged, and Miss Havisham was alone. 
" Well ! " said she, fixing her eyes upon me. '' I hope you want 
nothing? Youll get nothing." 

" No indeed, Miss Havisham. I only wanted you to know that 
I am doing very w^ell in my apprenticeship, and am always much 
obliged to you." 

" There, there ! " with the old restless fingers. " Come now and 
then ; come on your birthday. — Ay ! " she cried suddenly, turning 
herself and her chair towards me, "You are looking round for 
Estella? Hey?" 

I had been looking round — in fact, for Estella — and I stam- 
mered that I hoped she was well. 

" Abroad," said Miss Havisham ; " educating for a lady ; far out 
of reach; prettier than ever; admired by all who see her. Do 
you feel that you have lost her 1 " 

There was such a malignant enjoyment in her utterance of the 
last words, and she broke into such a disagreeable laugh, that I 
was at a loss what to sslj. She spared me the trouble of consider- 
ing, by dismissing me. When the gate was closed upon me by 
Sarah of the w^alnut-shell countenance, I felt more than ever dissat- 
isfied with my home and with my trade and with everything ; and 
that was all I took by that motion. 

As I was loitering along the High-street, looking in disconso- 
lately at the shoiD windows, and thinking what I w^ould buy if I 
were a gentleman, who should come out of the bookshop but Mr. 
Wopsle. Mr. Wopsle had in his hand the affecting tragedy of 
George Barnwell, in which he had that moment invested sixpence, 
with the view of heaping every word of it on the head of Pumble- 
chook, with whom he was going to drink tea. No sooner did he 
see me, than he appeared to consider that a special Providence had 
put a 'prentice in his way to be read at ; and he laid hold of me, 
and insisted on my accompanying him to the Pumblechookian par- 
lour. As I knew it Avould be miserable at home, and as the nights 
were dark and the way was dreary, and almost any companionship 
on the road was better than none, I made no great resistance ; con- 
sequently, we turned into Pumblechook's just as the street and the 
shops were lighting up. 

As I never assisted at any other representation of George Barn- 
well, I don't know how long it may usually take ; but I know very 
well that it took until half-past nine o'clock that night, and that 
when ]\Ir. Wopsle got into Newgate, I thought he never would go 
to the scafi"old, he became so much slower than at any former period 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 101 

of his disgraceful career. I thought it a little too much that he 
should complain of being cut short in his flower after all, as if he 
had not been running to seed, leaf after leaf, ever since his course 
began. Tiiis, however, was a mere question of length and weari- 
someness. What stung me, was the identification of the whole 
affair with my unoffending self AVhen Barnwell began to go 
wrong, I declare I felt positively apologetic, Pumblechook's indig- 
nant stare so taxed me with it. Wopsle, too, took pains to present 
me in the worst light. At once ferocious and maudlin, I was made 
to murder my uncle with no extenuating circumstances whatever ; 
Millwood put me down in argument, on every occasion ; it became 
sheer monomania in my master's daughter to care a button for me ; 
and all I can say for my gasping and procrastinating conduct on 
the fatal morning, is, that it was worthy of the general feebleness 
of my character. Even after I was happily hanged and Wopsle 
had closed the book, Pumblechook sat staring at me, and shaking 
his head, and saying, " Take warning, boy, take warning ! " as if it 
were a well-known fact that I contemplated murdering a near rela- 
tion, provided I could only induce one to have the weakness to 
become my benefactor. 

It was a very dark night when it was all over, and when I set 
out with Mr. Wopsle on the walk home. Beyond town, we found 
a heavy mist out, and it fell wet and thick. The turnpike lamp 
was a blur, quite out of the lamp's usual place apparently, and its 
rays looked solid substance on the fog. We were noticing this, 
and saying how that the mist rose with a change of wind from a 
certain quarter of our marshes, when we came upon a man, slouch- 
ing under the lee of the turnpike house. 

" Halloa ! " we said, stopping. " Orlick there ? " 

"Ah!" he answered, slouching out. "I was standing by, a 
minute, on the chance of company." 

"You are late," I remarked. 

Orlick not unnaturally answered, " Well ? And yow're late." 

" We have been," said Mr. Wopsle, exalted Avith his late per- 
formance, "we have been indulging, Mr. Orlick, in an intellectual 
evening." 

Old OrHck growled, as if he had nothing to say about that, and 
we all went on together. I asked him presently whether he had 
been spending his half-holiday up and down town 1 

" Yes," said he, " all of it. I come in behind yourself I didn't 
see you, but I must have been pretty close behind you. By-the-bye, 
the guns is going again." 

"At the Hulks?" said I. 

" Ay ! There's some of the birds flown from the cages. The 



102 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

guns have been going since dark, about. You'll hear one pres- 
ently." 

In effect, we had not walked many yards further, when the well- 
remembered boom came towards us, deadened by the mist, and 
heavily rolled away along the low grounds by the river, as if it were 
pursuing and threatening the fugitives. 

"A good night for cutting off in," said Orlick. "We'd be 
puzzled how to bring down a jail-bird on the wing, to-night." 

The subject was a suggestive one to me, and I thought about it 
in silence. Mr. Wopsle, as the ill-requited uncle of the evening's 
tragedy, fell to meditating aloud in his garden at Camberwell. 
Orlick, with his hands in his pockets, slouched heavily at my side. 
It was very dark, very wet, very muddy, and so we splashed along. 
Now and then, the sound of the signal cannon broke upon us again, 
and again rolled sulkily along the course of the river. I kept my- 
self to myself and my thoughts. Mr. Wopsle died amiably at 
Camberwell, and exceedingly game on Bosworth Field, and in the 
greatest agonies at Griastonbury. Orlick sometimes growled, " Beat 
it out, beat it out — Old Clem ! With a clink for the stout — Old 
Clem ! " I thought he had been drinking, but he was not drunk. 

Thus, we came to the village. The way by which we approached 
it, took us past the Three Jolly Bargemen, which we were surprised 
to find — it being eleven o'clock — in a state of commotion, with 
the door wide open, and unwonted lights that had been hastily 
caught up and put down, scattered about. Mr. Wopsle dropped 
in to ask what was the matter (surmising that a convict had been 
taken), but came running out in a great hurry. 

"There's something wrong," said he, without stopping, "up at 
your place, Pip. Run all ! " 

"What is it?" I asked, keeping up witli him. So did Orlick, 
at my side. 

" I can't quite understand. The house seems to have been vio- 
lently entered when Joe Gargery was out. Supposed by convicts. 
Somebody has been attacked and hurt." 

We were running too fast to admit of more being said, and we 
made no stop until we got into our kitchen. It was full of people ; 
the whole village was there, or in the yard; and there was a sur- 
geon, and there was Joe, and there was a group of women, all on 
the floor in the midst of the kitchen. The unemployed bystanders 
drew back when they saw me, and so I became aware of my sister 
— lying without sense or movement on the bare boards where she 
had been knocked down by a tremendous blow on the back of the 
head, dealt by some unknoAvn hand when her face was turned 
towards the fire — destined never to be on the Rampage again, 
while she was the wife of Joe. 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 103 



CHAPTER XVI. 

With my head full of George Barnwell, I was at first disposed 
to believe that / must have had some hand in the attack upon my 
sister, or at all events that as her near relation, popularly known 
to be under obligations to her, I was a more legitimate object of 
suspicion than any one else. But when, in the clearer light of 
next morning, I began to reconsider the matter and to hear it dis- 
cussed around me on all sides, I took another view of the case, 
which was more reasonable. 

Joe had been at the Three Jolly Bargemen, smoking his pipe, 
from a quarter after eight o'clock to a quarter before ten. While 
he was there, my sister had been seen standing at the kitchen door 
and had exchanged Good iSTight with a farm-labourer going home. 
The man could not be more particular as to the time at which he 
saw^ her (he got into dense confusion when he tried to be) than 
that it must have been before nine. When Joe went home at five 
minutes before ten, he found her struck down on the floor, and 
promptly called in assistance. The fire had not then burnt unusu- 
ally low, nor was the snuff" of the candle very long ; the candle, 
however, had been blown out, 

Nothing had been taken away from any part of the house. 
Neither, beyond the blowing out of the candle — which stood on 
a table between the door and my sister, and was behind her when 
she stood facing the fire and was struck — was there any disar- 
rangement of the kitchen, excepting such as she herself had made, 
in falling and bleeding. But, there was one remarkable piece of 
evidence on the spot. She had been struck with something blunt 
and heavy, on the head and spine ; after the blows were dealt, 
something henYj had been thrown dovrn at her with considerable 
violence, as she lay on her face. And on the ground beside her, 
when Joe picked her up, was a convict's leg-iron which had been 
filed asunder. 

Now, Joe, examining this iron with a smith's eye, declared it to 
have been filed asunder some time ago. The hue and cry going off" 
to the Hulks, and people coming thence to examine the iron, Joe's 
opinion was corroborated. They did not undertake to say when it 
had left the prison-ships to which it undoubtedly had once be- 
longed ; but they claimed to know for certain that that particular 
manacle had not been worn by either of two convicts who had es- 
caped last night. Further, one of those two was already re-taken, 
and had not freed himself of liis iron. 

Knowing what I knew, I set up an inference of my own here. 



104 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

I believed the iron to be my convict's iron — the iron I had seen 
and heard him tiling at, on the marshes — but my mind did not 
accuse him of having put it to its latest use. For, I believed one 
of two other persons to have become possessed of it, and to have 
turned it to this cruel account. Either Orlick, or the strange man 
who had sho^Mi me the file. 

Now, as to Orlick ; he had gone to town exactly as he told us 
when we picked him up at the turnpike, he had been seen about 
town all the evening, he had been in divers companies in several 
public-houses, and he had come back with myself and Mr. Wopsle. 
There was nothing agiiinst him, save the quarrel ; and my sister 
had quarrelled with him, and with everybody else about her, ten 
thousand times. As to the strange man ; if he had come back for 
his two bank-notes there could have been no dispute about them, 
because my sister was fully prepared to restore them. Besides, 
there had been no altercation ; the assailant had come in so silently 
and suddenly, that she had been felled before she could look round. 

It was horrible to think that I had provided the weapon, how- 
ever undesignedly, but I could hardly think otherwise. I suffered 
unspeakable trouble while I considered and reconsidered whether I 
should at last dissolve that spell of my childhood and tell Joe all 
the story. For months afterwards, I every day settled the ques- 
tion finally in the negative, and reopened and reargued it next 
morning. The contention came, after all, to this; — the secret 
was such an old one now, had so grown into me and become a part 
of myself, that T could not tear it away. In addition to the dread 
that, having led up to so much mischief, it would be now more 
likely than ever to alienate Joe from me if he believed it, I had a 
further restraining dread that he would not believe it, but would 
assert it with the fabulous dogs and veal-cutlets as a monstrous 
invention. However, I temporised with myself, of course — for, 
was I not wavering between right and wrong, wdien the thing is 
always done ? — and resolved to make a full disclosure if I should 
see any such new occasion as a new chance of helping in the dis- 
covery of the assailant. 

The Constables, and the Bow Street men from London — for, 
this happened in the days of the extinct red-waistcoated police — 
were about the house for a week or two, and did pretty much what 
I have heard and read of like authorities doing in other such cases. 
They took up several obviously wrong people, and they ran their 
heads very hard against wrong ideas, and persisted in trying to fit 
the circumstances to the ideas, instead of trying to extract ideas 
from the circumstances. Also, they stood about the door of the 
Jolly Bargemen, with knowing and reserved looks that filled the 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 105 

whole neighbourhood with admiration ; and they had a mysterious 
manner of taking their drink, that was ahnost as good as taking 
the culprit. But not quite, for they never did it. 

Long after these constitutional powers had dispersed, my sister 
lay very ill in bed. Her sight was disturbed, so that she saw 
objects multiplied, and grasped at visionary teacups and wane- 
glasses instead of the realities ; her hearing was greatly impaired ; 
her memory also; and her speech was unintelligible. When, at 
last, she came round so far as to be helped downstairs, it was still 
necessary to keep my slate always by her, that she might indicate 
in writing what she could not indicate in speech. As she was (very 
bad handwriting apart) a more than indifferent speller, and as Joe 
was a more than indifferent reader, extraordinary complications 
arose between them, which I was always called in to solve. The 
administration of mutton instead of medicine, the substitution of 
Tea for Joe, and the baker for bacon, were among the mildest of 
my own mistakes. 

However, her temper was greatly improved, and she was patient. 
A tremulous uncertainty of the action of all her limbs soon became 
a part of her regular state, and afterwards, at intervals of two or 
three months, she would often put her hands to her head, and 
would then remain for about a week at a time in some gloomy 
aberration of mind. We were at a loss to find a suitable attendant 
for her, until a circumstance happened conveniently to relieve us. 
Mr. Wopsle's great-aunt conquered a confirmed habit of living into 
which she had fallen, and Biddy became a part of our establish- 
ment. 

It may have been a month after my sister's reappearance in the 
kitchen, when Biddy came to us with a small speckled box contain- 
ing the whole of her worldly efi'ects, and became a blessing to the 
household. Above all she was a blessing to Joe, for the dear old 
fellow was sadly cut up by the constant contemplation of the wreck 
of his wife, and had been accustomed, while attending on her of an 
evening, to turn to me every now and then and say, with his blue 
eyes moistened, " Such a fine figure of a woman as she once were, 
Pip ! " Biddy instantly taking the cleverest charge of her as though 
she had studied her from infancy, Joe became able in some sort to 
appreciate the greater quiet of his life, and to get down to the 
Jolly Bargemen nowiand then for a change that did him good. It 
was characteristic of the police people that they had all more or 
less suspected poor Joe (though he never knew it), and that they 
had to a man concurred in regarding him as one of the deepest 
spirits they had ever encountered. 

Biddy's first triumph in her new office, was to solve a difficulty 



106 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

that had completely vanquished me. I had tried hard at it, but 
had made nothing of it. Thus it was : 

Again and again and again, my sister had traced upon the slate, 
a character that looked like a curious T, and then with the utmost 
eagerness had called our attention to it as something she particu- 
larly wanted. I had in vain tried everything producible that began 
with a T, from tar to toast and tub. At length it had come into 
my head that the sign looked like a hammer, and on my lustily call- 
ing that word in my sister's ear, she had begun to hammer on 
the table and had expressed a qualified assent. Thereupon, I had 
brought in all our hammers, one after another, but without avail. 
Then I bethought me of a crutch, the shape being much the same, 
and I borrowed one in the village, and displayed it to my sister 
with considerable confidence. But she shook her head to that 
extent when she was shown it, that we were terrified lest in her 
weak and shattered state she should dislocate her neck. 

When my sister found that Biddy was very quick to understand 
her, this mysterious sign reappeared on the slate. Biddy looked 
thoughtfully at it, heard my explanation, looked thoughtfully at my 
sister, looked thoughtfully at Joe (who was always represented on 
the slate by his initial letter), and ran into the forge, followed by 
Joe and me. 

" Why, of course ! " cried Biddy, with an exultant face. " Don't 
you see? It's himf'' 

Orlick, without a doubt ! She had lost his name, and could only 
signify him by his hammer. AVe told him why we wanted him to 
come into the kitchen, and he slowly laid down his hammer, wiped 
his brow with his arm, took another wipe at it with his apron, and 
came slouching out, with a curious loose vagabond bend in the knees 
that strongly disting-uished him. 

I confess that I expected to see my sister denounce him, and that 
I was disappointed by the different result. She manifested the 
greatest anxiety to be on good terms with him, was evidently much 
pleased by his being at length produced, and motioned that she 
would liave him given something to drink. She watched his coun- 
tenance as if she were particularly wishful to be assured that he 
took kindly to his reception, she showed every possible desire to 
conciliate him, and there was an air of humble propitiation in all 
she did, such as I have seen pervade the bearing of a child towards 
a hard master. After that day, a day rarely passed without her 
drawing the hammer on her slate, and without Orlick's slouching in 
and standing doggedly before her, as if he knew no more than I did 
what to make of it. 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 107 



CHAPTER XVII. 

I NOW fell into a regular routine of apprenticeship life, which 
was varied, beyond tlie limits of the village and the marshes, by no 
more remarkable circumstance than the arrival of my birthday and 
my paying another visit to Miss Havisham. I found Miss Sarah 
Pocket still on duty at the gate, I found Miss Havisham just as I 
had left her, and she spoke of Estella in the very same way, if not 
in the very same words. The interview lasted but a few minutes, 
and she gave me a guinea when I was going, and told me to come 
again on my next birthday. I may mention at once that this 
became an annual custom. I tried to decline taking the guinea on 
the first occasion, but with no better effect than causing her to 
ask me very angrily, if I expected more ? Then, and after that, 
I took it. 

So unchanging was the dull old house, the yellow light in the 
darkened room, the faded spectre in the chair by the dressing-table 
glass, that I felt as if the stopping of the clocks had stopped Time 
in that mysterious place, and, while I and everything else outside 
it grew older, it stood still. Daylight never entered the house, as 
to my thoughts and remembrances of it, any more than as to the 
actual fact. It bewildered me, and under its influence I continued 
at heart to hate my trade and to be ashamed of home. 

Imperceptibly I became conscious of a change in Biddy, however. 
Her shoes came up at the heel, her hair grew bright and neat, her 
hands were always clean. She was not beautiful — she was com- 
mon, and could not be like Estella — but she was pleasant and 
wholesome and sweet-tempered. She had not been with us more 
than a year (I remember her being newly out of mourning at the 
time it struck me), when I observed to myself one evening that 
she had curiously thoughtful and attentive eyes ; eyes that were 
very pretty and very good. 

It came of my lifting up my own eyes from a task I was poring 
at — writing some passages from a book, to improve myself in two 
ways at once by a sort of stratagem — and seeing Biddy observant 
of what I was about. I laid down my pen, and Biddy stopped in 
her needlework without laying it down. 

"Biddy," said I, "how do you manage it? Either I am very 
stupid, or you are very clever." 

"What is it that I manage? I don't know," returned Biddy, 
smiling. 

She managed her whole domestic life, and wonderfully too ; but 
I did not mean that, though that made what I did mean, more 
surprising. 



108 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

"How do you manage, Bid^ly," said I, " to learn everything that 
I learn, and always to keep up with me ? " I was beginning to be 
rather vain of my knowledge, for I spent my birthday guineas on 
it, and set aside the greater part of my pocket-money for similar 
investment; though I have no doubt, now, that the little I knew 
was extremely dear at the price. 

" I might as well ask you," said Biddy, " how you manage % " 

"No; because when I come in from the forge of a night, any 
one can see me turning to at it. But you never turn to at it, 
Biddy." 

" I suppose I must catch it — like a cough," said Biddy, quietly; 
and went on with her sewing. 

Pursuing my idea as I leaned back in my wooden chair and 
looked at Biddy sewing away with her head on one side, I began 
to think her rather an extraordinary girl. For, I called to mind 
now, that she was equally accomplished in the terms of our trade, 
and the names of our different sorts of work, and our various tools. 
In short, whatever I knew, Biddy knew. Theoretically, she was 
already as good a blacksmith as I, or better. 

"You are one of those, Biddy," said I, "who make the most of 
every chance. You never had a chance before you came here, and 
see how improved you are ! " 

Biddy looked at me for an instant, and went on with her sew- 
ing. 

" I was your first teacher though ; wasn't I ? " said she, as she 
sewed. 

" Biddy ! " I exclaimed, in amazement. " Why, you are crying ! " 

" No I am not," said Biddy, looking up and laughing. " What 
put that in your head % " 

What could have put it in my head, but the glistening of a 
tear as it dropped on her work? I sat silent, recalling what a 
drudge she had been until Mr. Wopsle's great-aunt successfully 
overcame that bad habit of living, so highly desirable to be got 
rid of by some people. I recalled the hopeless circumstances by 
which she had been surrounded in the miserable little shop and 
the miserable little noisy evening school, with that miserable old 
bundle of incompetence always to be dragged and shouldered. I 
reflected that even in those untoward times there must have been 
latent in Biddy what was now developing, for, in my first uneasi- 
ness and discontent I had turned to her for help, as a matter of 
course. Biddy sat quietly sewing, shedding no more tears, and 
while I looked at her and thought about it all, it occurred to me 
that perhaps I had not been sufiieiently grateful to Biddy. I 
might have been too reserved, and should have patronised her 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 109 

more (though I did not use that precise word in my meditations), 
with my confidence. 

" Yes, Biddy," I observed, when I had done turning it over, " you 
were my first teacher, and that at a time when we little thought of 
ever being together like this, in this kitchen." 

" Ah, poor thing ! " replied Biddy. It was like her self-forget- 
fulness, to transfer the remark to my sister, and to get up and be 
busy about her, making her more comfortable : " that's sadly true ! " 

" Well," said I, " we must talk together a little more, as we 
used to do. And I nmst consult you a little more, as I used to 
do. Let us have a quiet walk on the marshes next Sunday, Biddy, 
and a long chat." 

My sister was never left alone now ; but Joe more than readily 
undertook the care of her on that Sunday afternoon, and Biddy and 
I went out together. It was summer-time and lovely weather. 
When we had passed the village and the church and the church- 
yard, and were out on the marshes, and began to see the sails of 
the ships as they sailed on, I began to combine Miss Havisham and 
Estella with the prospect, in my usual way. When we came to 
the river-side and sat down on the bank, with the water rippling 
at our feet, making it all more quiet than it would have been 
without that sound, I resolved that it was a good time and 
place for the admission of Biddy into my inner confidence. 

"Biddy," said I, after binding her to secrecy, " I want to be a 
gentleman." 

" Oh, I wouldn't, if I was you ! " she returned. " I don't think 
it would answer." 

" Biddy," said I, with some severity, " I have particular reasons 
for wanting to be a gentleman." 

"You know best, Pip; but don't you think you are happier as 
you are 1 " 

" Biddy," I exclaimed, impatiently, " I am not at all happy as I 
am. I am disgusted with my calling and with my life. I have 
never taken to either since I was bound. Don't be absurd." 

" Was I absurd ? " said Biddy, quietly raising her eyebrows ; "I 
am sorry for that ; I didn't mean to be. I only want you to do 
well, and be comfortable." 

"Well, then, understand once for all that I never shall or can 
be comfortable — or anything but miserable — there, Biddy ! — 
unless I can lead a very different sort of life from the life I lead 
now." 

" That's a pity ! " said Biddy, shaking her head with a sorrowful 
air. 

Now, I too had so often thought it a pity, that, m the singular 



110 • GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

kind of quarrel with myself which I was always carrying on, I was 
half inclined to shed tears of vexation and distress when Biddy 
gave utterance to her sentiment and my own. I told her she 
was right, and I knew it was much to be regretted, but still it 
was not to be helped. 

" If I could have settled down," I said to Biddy, plucking up the 
short grass within reach, much as I had once upon a time pulled 
my feelings out of my hair and kicked them into the brewery well : 
" if I could have settled down and been but half as fond of the forge 
as I was when I was little, I know it would have been much better 
for me. You and I and Joe would have wanted nothing then, and 
Joe and I would perhaps have gone partners when I was out of my 
time, and I might even have grown up to keep company with you, 
and we might have sat on this very bank on a fine Sunday, quite 
different people. I should have been good enough for you; 
shouldn't I, Biddy?" 

Biddy sighed as she looked at the sliips sailing on, and returned 
for answer, "Yes ; I am not over-particular." It scarcely sounded 
flattering, but I knew she meant well. 

"Instead of that," said I, plucking up more grass and chewing 
a blade or two, " see how I am going on. Dissatisfied, and uncom- 
fortable, and — what would it signify to me, being coarse and 
common, if nobody had told me so ! " 

Biddy turned her face suddenly towards mine, and looked far 
more attentively at me than she had looked at the sailing ships. 

" It was neither a very true nor a very polite thing to say," she 
remarked, directing her eyes to the ships again. " Who said it % " 

I was disconcerted, for I had broken away without quite seeing 
where I was going to. It was not to be shuffled off, now, however, 
and I answered, "The beautiful young lady at Miss Havisham's, 
and she's more beautiful than anybody ever was, and I admire her 
dreadfully, and I want to be a gentleman on her account." Hav- 
ing made this lunatic confession, I began to throw my torn-up 
grass into the river, as if I had some thoughts of following it. 

" Do you want to be a gentleman, to spite her or to gain her 
over % " Biddy quietly asked me, after a pause. 

"I don't know," I moodily answered. 

"Because, if it is to spite her," Biddy pursued, "I should think 
— but you know best — that might be better and more indepen- 
dently done by caring nothing for her words. And if it is to gain 
her over, I should think — but you know best — she was not worth 
gaining over." 

Exactly what I myself had thought, many times. Exactly what 
was perfectly manifest to me at the moment. But how could I, 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. Ill 

a poor dazed village lad, avoid that wonderfid inconsistency into 
which the best and wisest of men fall every day ? 

"It may be all quite true," said I to Biddy, " but I admire her 
dreadfully." 

In short, I turned over on my face when I came to that, and got 
a good grasp on the hair, on each side of my head, and wrenched 
it well. All the while knowing the madness of my heart to be so 
very mad and misplaced, that I was quite conscious it would have 
served my face right, if I had lifted it up by my hair, and knocked 
it against the pebbles as a punishment for belonging to such an 
idiot. 

Biddy was the wisest of girls, and she tried to reason no 
more with me. She put her hand, which was a comfortable hand 
though roughened by work, upon my hands, one after another, 
and gently took them out of my hair. Then she softly patted my 
shoulder in a soothing way, while with my face upon my sleeve I 
cried a little — exactly as I had done in the brewery yard — and 
felt vaguely convinced that I was very much iU-used by somebody, 
or by everybody ; I can't say which. 

"I am glad of one thing," said Biddy, "and that is, that you 
have felt you could give me your confidence, Pip. And I am glad 
of another thing,, and that is, that of course you know you may 
depend upon my keeping it and always so fir deserving it. If 
your first teacher (dear ! such a poor one, and so much in need of 
being taught herself !) had been your teacher at the present time, 
she thinks she knows what lesson she would set. But it would be 
a hard one to learn, and you have got beyond her, and it's of no 
use now." So, with a quiet sigh for me, Biddy rose from the 
bank, and said, with a fresh and pleasant change of voice, " Shall 
we walk a little further, or go home ? " 

" Biddy," I cried, getting up, putting my arm around her neck, 
and giving her a kiss, "I shall always tell you everything." 

"Till you're a gentleman," said Biddy. 

"You know I never shall be, so that's always. Not that I 
have any occasion to tell you anything, for you know everything I 
know — as I told you at home the other night." 

" Ah ! " said Biddy, quite in a whisper, as she looked away at 
the ships. And then repeated, with her former pleasant change ; 
" shall we walk a little further, or go home ? " 

I said to Biddy we would walk a little further, and we did so, 
and the summer afternoon toned down into the summer evening, 
and it was very beautiful. I began to consider whether I was not 
more naturally and wholesomely situated, after all, in these circum- 
stances, than playing beggar my neighbour by candlelight in the 



112 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

room with the stopped clocks, and being despised by Estella. I 
thought it would be very good for me if I could get her out of my 
head with all the rest of those remembrances and fancies, and could 
go to work determined to relish what I had to do, and stick to it, 
and make the best of it. I asked myself the question whether I 
did not surely know that if Estella were beside me at that moment 
instead of Biddy, she would make me miserable ? I was obliged 
to admit that I did know it for a certainty, and I said to myself, 
*' Pip, what a fool you are ! " 

We talked a good deal as we walked, and all that Biddy said 
seemed right. Biddy was never insulting, or capricious, or Biddy 
to-day and somebody else to-morrow ; she would have derived only 
pain, and no pleasure, from gi\ing me pain ; she would far rather 
have wounded her own breast than mine. How could it be, then, 
that I did not like her much the better of the two 1 

" Biddy," said I, wdien we were w^alking homeward, " I wish 
you could put me right." 

" I wish I could ! " said Biddy. 

" If I could only get myself to fall in love with you — you don't 
mind my speaking so openly to such an old acquaintance ? " 

'• ^h dear, not at all ! " said Biddy. "Don't mind me." 

" If I could only get myself to do it, that would be the thing 
for me." 

" But you never will, you see," said Biddy. 

It did not appear quite so unlikely to me that evening, as it 
would have done if we had discussed it a few hours before. I 
therefore observed I was not quite sure of that. But Biddy said 
she ivas, and she said it decisively. In my heart I believed her to 
be right ; and. yet I took it rather ill, too, that she should be so 
positive on the point. 

When we came near the churchyard, we had to cross an embank- 
ment, and get over a stile near a sluice-gate. There started up, 
from the gate, or from the rushes, or from the ooze (which was 
quite in his stagnant way), (31d Orlick. 

" Halloa ! " he growled, " where are you two going ? " 

"Where should we be going, but home?" 

"Well, then," said he, "I'm jiggered if I don't see you home ! " 

This penalty of being jiggei-ed was a favourite supposititious case 
of his. He attached no definite meaning to the word that I am 
aware of, but used it, like his own pretended Christian name, to 
affront mankind, and convey an idea of something savagely damag- 
ing. When I was younger, I had had a general belief that if he 
had jiggered me personally, he would have done it with a sharp 
and twisted hook. 



GKEAT EXPECTATIONS. 113 

Biddy was much against liis going with us, and said to me in a 
whisper, " Don't let him come ; I don't like him." As I did not like 
him either, I took the liberty of saying that we thanked him, but 
we didn't want seeing home. He received that piece of informa- 
tion with a yell of laughter, and dropped back, but came slouching 
after us at a little distance. 

Curious to know whether Biddy suspected him of having had a 
hand in that murderous attack of which my sister had never been 
able to give any account, I asked her why she did not like him. 

" Oh ! " she replied, glancing over her shoulder as he slouched 
after us, "because I — I am afraid he likes me." 

"Did he ever tell you he liked you?" I asked, indignantly. 

" No," said Biddy, glancing over her shoulder again, " he never 
told me so ; but he dances at me, whenever he can catch my eye." 

However novel and peculiar this testimony of attachment, I did 
not doubt the accuracy of the interpretation. I was very hot 
indeed upon Old Orlick's daring to admire her ; as hot as if it were 
an outrage on myself. 

"But it makes no difference to you, you know," said Biddy, 
calmly. ' 

" No, Biddy, it makes no difference to me ; only I don't like it ; 
I don't approve of it." 

" Nor I neither," said Biddy. " Though that makes no difference 
to you." 

"Exactly," said I ; "but I must tell you I should have no opin- 
ion of you, Biddy, if he danced at you with your own consent." 

I kept an eye on Orlick after that night, and whenever cu'cum- 
stances were ftxvourable to his dancing at Biddy, got before him, to 
obscure that demonstration. He had struck root in Joe's establish- 
ment, by reason of my sister's sudden fancy for him, or I shoidd 
have tried to get him dismissed. He quite understood and recipro- 
cated my good intentions, as I had reason to know thereafter. 

And now, because my mind was not confused enough before, I 
complicated its confusion fifty thousand-fold, by having states and 
seasons when I was clear that Biddy was immeasurably better than 
Estella, and that the plain honest working life to which I was bom 
had nothing in it to be ashamed of, but offered me sufficient means 
of self-respect and happiness. At those times, I would decide con- 
clusively that my disaffection to dear old Joe and the forge, was 
gone, and that I was growing up in a fair way to be partners with 
Joe and to keep company with Biddy — when all in a moment 
some confounding remembrance of the Havisham days would fall 
upon me, like a destructive missile, and scatter my wits again. 
Scattered wits take a long time picking up ; and often, before I 



114 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

had got them well together, they would be dispersed in all direc- 
tions by one stray thought, that perhaps after all Miss Havisham 
was going to make my fortune when my time was out. 

If my time had run out, it would have left me stilL at the height 
of my perplexities, I dare say. It never did run out, however, but 
was brought to a premature end, as I proceed to relate. 



f / CHAPTER XVIII. 

It was in the fourth year of my apprenticeship to Joe, and it 
was a Saturday night. There was a group assembled round the 
fii'e at the Three Jolly Bargemen, attentive to Mr. Wopsle as he 
read the newspaper aloud. Of that group I was one. 

A highly popular murder had been committed, and Mr. Wopsle 
was imbrued in blood to the eyebrows. He gloated over every 
abhorrent adjective in the description, and identified himself with 
every witness at the Inquest. He faintly moaned, "I am done 
for," as the victim, and he barbarously bellowed, " I'll serve you 
out," as the murderer. He gave the medical testimony, in pointed 
imitation of our local practitioner ; and he piped and shook, as the 
aged turnpike-keeper who had heard blows, to an extent so very 
paralytic as to suggest a doubt regarding the mental competency 
of that witness. The coroner, in Mr. Wopsle's hands, became 
Timon of Athens; the beadle, Coriolanus. He enjoyed himself 
thoroughly, and we all enjoyed ourselves, and were dehghtfully 
comfortable. In this cozy state of mind we came to the verdict of 
Wilful Murder. 

Then, and not sooner, I became aware of a strange gentleman 
leaning over the back of the settle opposite me, looking on. 
There was an expression of contempt on his face, and he bit the 
side of a great forefinger as he watched the group of faces. 

" Well ! " said the stranger to Mr. Wopsle, when the reading 
was done, " you have settled it all to your own satisfaction, I have 
no doubt ? " 

Everybody started and looked up, as if it were the murderer. 
He looked at everybody coldly and sarcastically. 

" Guilty, of course ? " said he. " Out with it. Come ! " 

"Sir," returned Mr. Wopsle, "without having the honour of 
your acquaintance, I do say Guilty." Upon this we all took cour- 
age to unite in a confirmatory murmur. 

"I know you do," said the stranger; " I knew you would. I 
told you so. But now I'll ask you a question. Do you know, or 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 115 

do you not know, that the law of England supposes every man 
to be innocent, until he is proved — proved — to be guilty ? " 

"Sir," Mr. Wopsle began to reply, "as an Englishman myself, 
I " 

" Come ! " said the stranger, biting his forefinger at him. 
"Don't evade the question. Either you know it, or you don't 
know it. Which is it to be ? " 

He stood with his head on one side and himself on one side, in 
a bullying interrogative manner, and he threw his forefinger at Mr. 
Wopsle — as it were to mark him out — before biting it again. 

" Now ! " said he. " Do you know it, or don't you know it 1 " 

"Certainly I know it," replied Mr. Wopsle. 

" Certainly you know it. Then why didn't you say so at first ? 
Now, I'll ask you another question;" taking possession of Mr. 
Wopsle, as if he had a right to him. " Do you know that none of 
these witnesses have yet been cross-examined 1 " 

Mr. Wopsle was beginning, "I can only say " when the 

stranger stopped him. 

" What ? You won't answer the question, yes or no ? Now, 
I'll try you again." Throwing his finger at him again. "Attend 
to me. Are you aware, or are you not aware, that none of these 
witnesses have yet been cross-examined ? Come, I only want one 
word from you. Yes, or no ? " 

Mr. Wopsle hesitated, and we all began to conceive rather a 
poor opinion of him. 

" Come ! " said the stranger, " I'll help you. You don't deserve 
help, but I'll help you. Look at that paper you hold in your 
hand. What is it 1 " 

"What is it?" repeated Mr. Wopsle, eyeing it much at a loss. 

" Is it," pursued the stranger in his most sarcastic and suspi- 
cious manner, "the printed paper you have just been reading 
from?" 

" Undoubtedly." 

"Undoubtedly. Now, turn to that paper, and tell me whether 
it distinctly states that the prisoner expressly said that his legal 
advisers instructed him altogether to reserve his defence ? " 

"I read that just now," Mr. Wopsle pleaded. 

" Never mind what you read just now, sir ; I don't ask you 
what you read just now. You may read the Lord's Prayer back- 
wards, if you like — and, perhaps, have done it before to-day. 
Turn to the paper. No, no, no, my friend ; not to the top of the 
column ; you know better than that ; to the bottom, to the 
bottom." (We all began to think Mr. Wopsle full of subterfuge.) 
" Well 1 Have you found it ? " 



116 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

"Here it is," said Mr. Wopsle. 

" Now, follow that jDassage -^ath your eye, and tell me whether 
it distinctly states that the prisoner expressly said that he was 
instructed by his legal advisers wholly to reserve his defence? 
Come ! Do you make that of it 1 " 

Mr. Wopsle answered, "Those are not the exact words." 

" Not the exact words ! " repeated the gentleman, bitterly. " Is 
that the exact substance 1 " 

"Yes," said Mr. Wopsle. 

"Yes," repeated the stranger, looking round at the rest of the 
company with his right hand extended towards the witness, 
Wopsle. " And now I ask you what you say to the conscience of 
that man who, with that passage before his eyes, can lay his head 
upon his pillow after having pronounced a fellow-creature guilty, 
unheard ? " 

We all began to suspect that Mr. Wopsle was not the man we 
had thought him, and that he was beginning to be found out. 

"And that same man, remember," pursued the gentleman, 
throwing his finger at Mr. Wopsle heavily; "that same man 
might be summoned as a juryman upon this very trial, and having 
thus deeply committed himself, might return to the bosom of his 
family and lay his head upon his pillow, after deliberately swear- 
ing that he would well and truly try the issue joined between Our 
Sovereign Lord the King and the prisoner at the bar, and would a 
true verdict give according to the evidence, so help him God ! " 

We were all deeply persuaded that the unfortunate Wopsle had 
gone too far, and had better stop in his reckless career while there 
was yet time. 

The strange gentleman, with an air of authority not to be dis- 
puted, and with a manner expressive of knowing something secret 
about every one of us that would effectually do for each individual 
if he chose to disclose it, left the back of the settle, and came into 
the space between the two settles, in front of the fire, where he 
remained standing : his left hand in his pocket, and he biting the 
forefinger of his right. 

"From information I have received," said he, looking round at 
us as we all quailed before him, " I have reason to believe there is a 
blacksmith among you, by name Joseph — or Joe — Gargery. 
Which is the man ? " 

"Here is the man," said Joe. 

The strange gentleman beckoned him out of his place, and Joe 
went. 

"You have an apprentice," pursued the stranger, "commonly 
known as Pip ? Is he here ? " 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 117 

'' I am here ! " I cried. 

The stranger did not recognise me, but I recognised him as the 
gentleman I had met on the stairs, on the occasion of my second 
visit to Miss Havisham. I had known him the moment I saw him 
looking over the settle, and now that I stood confronting him with 
his hand upon my shoulder, I checked ofif again in detail, his large 
head, his dark complexion, his deep-set eyes, his bushy black eye- 
brows, his large watch-chain, his strong black dots of beard and 
whisker, and even the smell of scented soap on his great hand. 

" I wish to have a private conference with you two," said he, 
when he had surveyed me at his leisure. " It will take a little 
time. Perhaps we had better go to your place of residence. I 
prefer not to anticipate my communication here ; you will impart 
as much or as little of it as you please to your friends afterwards ; 
I have nothing to do with that." 

Amidst a wondering silence, w^e three w^alked out of the Jolly 
Bargemen, and in a w^ondering silence walked home. While going 
along, the strange gentleman occasionally looked at me, and occa- 
sionally bit the side of his finger. As we neared home, Joe vaguely 
acknowledging the occasion as an impressive and ceremonious one, 
went on ahead to open the front door. Our conference was held in 
the state parlour, which w^as feebly lighted by one candle. 

It began with the strange gentleman's sitting down at the table, 
drawing the candle to him, and looking over some entries in his 
pocket-book. He then put up the pocket-book and set the candle 
a little aside : after peering round it into the darkness at Joe and 
me, to ascertain which was which. 

"My name," he said, "is Jaggers, and I am a lawyer in London. 
I am pretty well knowm, I have unusual business to transact with 
you, and I commence by explaining that it is not of my originating. 
If my advice had been asked, I should not have been here. It was 
not asked, and you see me here. What I have to do as the confi- 
dential agent of another, I do. No less, no more." 

Finding that he could not see us ver}'- well from where he sat, he 
got up, and threw one leg over the back of a chair and leaned upon 
it ; thus having one foot on the seat of a chair, and one foot on the 
ground. 

"Now, Joseph G-argery, I am the bearer of an offer to relieve you 
of this young fellow, your apprentice. You would not object to 
cancel his indentures at his request and for his good ? You would 
want nothing for so doing ? " 

" Lord forbid that I should w^ant anything for not standing in 
Pip's w^ay," said Joe, staring. 

"Lord forbidding is pious, but not to the purpose," returned Mr. 



118 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

Jaggers. " The question is, Would you want anything ? Do you 
want anything 1 " 

" The answer is," returned Joe, sternly, "No." 

I thought Mr. Jaggers glanced at Joe, as if he considered him a 
fool for his disinterestedness. But I was too much bewildered be- 
tween breathless curiosity and surprise, to be sure of it. 

"Very well," said Mr. Jaggers. "Recollect the admission you 
have made, and don't try to go from it presently." 

" Who's a going to tiy ? " retorted Joe. 

" I don't say anybody is. Do you keep a dog ? " 

"Yes, I do keep a dog." 

" Bear in mind then, that Brag is a good dog, but that Holdfast 
is a better. Bear that in mind, will you ? " repeated Mr. Jaggers, 
shutting his eyes and nodding his head at Joe, as if he were forgiving 
him something. " I^ow, I return to this young fellow. And the 
communication I have got to make is, that he has Great Expecta- 
tions." 

Joe and I gasped, and looked at one another. 

"I am instructed to communicate to him," said Mr. Jaggers, 
throwing his finger at me sideways, " that he will come into a 
handsome property. Further, that it is the desire of the present 
possessor of that property, that he be immediately removed from his 
present sphere of life and from this place, and be brought up as a 
gentleman — in a word, as a young fellow of great expectations." 

My dream was out ; my wild fancy was surpassed by sober reality ; 
Miss Havisham was going to make my fortune on a grand scale. 

" Now, Mr. Pip," pursued the lawyer, "I address the rest of what 
I have to say, to you. You are to understand, first, that it is the 
request of the person from whom I take my instructions, that you 
always bear the name of Pip. You will have no objection, I dare 
say, to your great expectations being encumbered with that easy 
condition. But if you have any objection, this is the time to men- 
tion it." 

My heart was beating so fast, and there was such a singing in 
my ears, that I could scarcely stammer I had no objection. 

" I should think not ! Now you are to understand, secondly, 
Mr. Pip, that the name of the person who is your liberal benefactor 
remains a profound secret, until the person chooses to reveal it. I 
am empowered to mention that it is the intention of the person to 
reveal it at first hand by word of mouth to yourself. W^hen or 
where that intention may be carried out, I cannot say ; no one can 
say. It may be years hence. Now, you are distinctly to under- 
stand that you are most positively prohibited from making any 
inquiry on this head, or any allusion or reference, however distant, 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 119 

to any iuflividual whomsoever as the individual, in all the commu- 
nications you may have vdth. me. If you have a suspicion in your 
own breast, keep that suspicion in your owti breast. It is not the 
least to the purpose what the reasons of this prohibition are ; they 
may be the strongest and gravest reasons, or they may be a mere 
whim. This is not for you to inquire into. The condition is laid 
down. Your acceptance of it, and your observance of it as binding, 
is the only remaining condition that I am charged with, by the 
person from whom I take my instructions, and for whom I am not 
otherwise responsible. That person is the person from whom you 
derive your expectations, and the secret is solely held by that per- 
son and by me. Again, not a very difficult condition with which 
to encumber such a rise in fortune ; but if you have any objection 
to it, this is the time to mention it. Speak out." 

Once more, I stammered with difficulty that I had no objec- 
tion. 

"I should think not ! Xow, Mr. Pip, I have done with stipu- 
lations." Though he called me Mr. Pip, and began rather to make 
up to me, he still could not get rid of a certain air of bullying sus- 
picion ; and even now he occasionally shut his eyes and threw his 
finger at me while he spoke, as much as to express that he knew 
all kinds of things to my disjDaragement, if he only chose to mention 
them. " We come next, to mere details of arrangement. You must 
know that although I use the term ' expectations ' more than once, 
you are not endowed with expectations only. There is already 
lodged in my hands, a sum of money amply sufficient for your suit- 
able education and maintenance. You will please consider me your 
guardian. Oh ! " for I was going to thank him, " I tell you at 
once, I am paid for my services, or I shouldn't render them. It is 
considered that you must be better educated, in accordance with 
your altered position, and that you will be alive to the importance 
and necessity of at once entering on that advantage." 

I said I had always longed for it. 

" iS'ever mind what you have always longed for, Mr. Pip," he re- 
torted, "kee^) to the record. If you long for it now, that's enough. 
Am I answered that you are ready to be placed at once, under some 
proper tutor 1 Is that it 1 " 

I stammered yes, that was it. 

"Good. Now, your inclinations are to be consulted. I don't 
think that wise, mind, but it's my trust. Have you ever heard of 
any tutor whom you woidd prefer to another ? " 

I had never heard of any tutor but Biddy, and Mr. Wopsle's 
great-aunt : so, I replied in the negative. 

" There is a certain tutor, of whom I have some knowledge, who 



120 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

I think might suit the purpose," said Mr. Jaggers. " I don't 
recommend liim, observe ; because I never recommend anybody. 
The gentleman I speak of is one Mr, Matthew Pocket." 

Ah I I caught at the name directly. Miss Havisham's relation. 
The Matthew whom Mr. and Mrs. Camilla had spoken of. The 
Matthew whose place was to be at Miss Havisham's head, when 
she lay dead, in her bride's dress on the bride's table. 

" You know the name ? " said Mr. Jaggers, looking shrewdly at 
me, and then shutting up his eyes while he waited for my answer. 

My answer was, that I had heard of the name. 

"Oh!" said he. "You have heard of the name! But the 
question is, what do you say of it ? " 

I said, or tried to say, that I was much obliged to him for his 
recommendation 

"No, my young friend ! " he internipted, shaking his great head 
very slowly. " Recollect yourself ! " 

Not recollecting myself, I began again that I was much obliged 
to him for his recommendation 

"No, my young friend," he interrupted, shaking his head and 
frowning and smiling both at once ; "no, no, no ; it's very well 
done, but it won't do; you are too young to fix me with it. 
Recommendation is not the word, Mr. Pip. Try another." 

Correcting myself, I said that I was much obliged to him for his 
mention of Mr. Matthew Pocket 

" That's more like it ! " cried i\Ir. Jaggers. 

— And (I added) I would gladly try that gentleman. 

" Good. You had better try him in his own house. The way 
shall be prepared for you, and you can see his son fii'st, who is in 
London. When will you come to London 1 " 

I said (glancing at Joe, who stood looking on, motionless), that 
I supposed I could come directly. 

"First," said Mr. Jaggers, "you should have some new clothes 
to come in, and they should not be working clothes. Say this 
day week. You'll want some money. Shall I leave you twenty 
guineas ? " 

He produced a long purse, with the greatest coolness, and 
counted them out on the table and pushed them over to me. 
This was the first time he had taken his leg from the chair. He 
sat astride of the chair when he had pushed the money over, and 
sat swinging his purse and eyeing Joe. 

" Well, Joseph Gargery ? You look dumbfoundered ? " 

" I am ! " said Joe, in a ver}^ decided manner. 

"It was understood that you wanted nothing for yourself, 
remember ? " 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 121 

" It were understood," said Joe. " And it are understood. And 
it ever will be similar according." 

" But what," said Mr. Jaggers, swinging his purse, " what if it 
was in my instructions to make you a present, as compensation ? " 

" As compensation what for ? " Joe demanded. 

" For the loss of his services." 

Joe laid his hand upon my shoulder with the touch of a woman. 
I have often thought him since, like the steam-hammer, that can 
ciTish a man or pat an egg-shell, in his combination of strength 
with gentleness. "Pip is that hearty welcome," said Joe, "to go 
free with his services, to honour and fortun', as no words can tell 
him. But if you think as Money can make compensation to me 
for the loss of the little child — what come to the forge — and 
ever the best of friends ! — " 

dear good Joe, whom I was so ready to leave and so unthankful 
to, I see you again, with your muscular blacksmith's arm before 
your eyes, and your broad chest heaving, and your voice dying 
away. dear good faithful tender Joe, I feel the loving tremble 
of your hand upon my arm, as solemnly this day as if it had been 
the rustle of an angel's wing ! 

But I encouraged Joe at the time. I was lost in the mazes of 
my future fortunes, and could not retrace the bye-paths we had 
trodden together. I begged Joe to be comforted, for (as he said) 
we had ever been the best of friends, and (as I said) we ever would 
be so. Joe scooped his eyes with his disengaged wrist, as if he 
were bent on gouging himself, but said not another word. 

Mr. Jaggers had looked on at this, as one who recognized in Joe 
the village idiot, and in me his keeper. When it was over, he 
said, weighing in his hand the purse he had ceased to swing : 

"Now, Joseph Gargery, I warn you this is your last chance. 
No half measures with me. If you mean to take a present that I 
have it in charge to make you, speak out, and you shall have it. 

If on the contrary you mean to say " Here, to his great 

amazement, he was stopped by Joe's suddenly working round him 
with every demonstration of a fell pugilistic purpose. 

"Which I meantersay," cried Joe, "that if you come into my 
place bull-baiting and badgering me, come out ! Which I meanter- 
say as sech if you're a man, come on ! Which I meantersay that 
what I say, I meantersay and stand or fall by ! " 

1 drew Joe away, and he immediately became placable : merely 
stating to me, in an obliging manner and as a polite expostulatoiy 
notice to any one whom it might happen to concern, that he were 
not a going to be bull-baited and badgered in his own place. Mr. 
Jaggers had risen when Joe demonstrated, and had backed near 



122 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

the door. Without evincing any inclination to come in again, he 
there delivered his valedictory remarks. They were these : 

"Well, Mr. Pip, I think the sooner you leave here — as you 
are to be a gentleman — the better. Let it stand for this day 
week, and you shall receive my printed address in the meantime. 
You can take a hackney-coach at the stage-coach office in London, 
and come straight to me. Understand that I express no opinion, 
one way or other, on the trust I undertake. I am paid for under- 
taking it, and I do so. Now, understand that finally. Under- 
stand that ! " 

He was throwing his finger at both of us, and I think would 
have gone on, but for his seeming to think Joe dangerous, and 
going off". 

Something came into my head which induced me to run after 
him as he was going down to the Jolly Bargemen, where he had 
left a hired carriage. 

" I beg your pardon, Mr. Jaggers." 

" Halloa ! " said he, facing round, " what's the matter ? " 

" I wish to be quite right, Mr. Jaggers, and to keep to your direc- 
tions ; so I thought I had better ask. Would there be any 
objection to my taking leave of any one I know, about here, 
before I go away?" 

"No," said he, looking as if he hardly understood me. 

" I don't mean in the village only, but up-town ? " 

" No," said he. " No objection." 

I thanked him and ran home again, and there I found that Joe 
had already locked the front door and vacated the state parlour, 
and was seated by the kitchen fire with a hand on each knee, 
gazing intently at the burning coals. I too sat down before the 
fire and gazed at tlie coals, and nothing was said for a long time. 

My sister was in her cushioned chair in her corner, and Biddy 
sat at her needle-work before the fire, and Joe sat next Biddy, 
and I sat next Joe in the corner opposite my sister. The more 
I looked into the glowing coals, the more incapable I became of 
looking at Joe ; the longer the silence lasted, the more unable I 
felt to speak. 

At length I got out, "Joe, have you told Biddy?" 

"No, Pip," returned Joe, still looking at the fire, and holding 
his knees tight, as if he had private information that they intended 
to make off" somewhere, " which I left it to yourself, Pip." 

" I would rather you told, Joe." 

" Pip's a gentleman of fortun' then," said Joe, "and God bless 
him in it ! " 

Biddy dropped her work, and looked at me. Joe held his knees 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 123 

and looked at me. I looked at both of them. After a pause they 
both heartily congratulated me ; but there was a certain touch of 
sadness in their congratulations that I rather resented. 

I took it upon myself to impress Biddy (and through Biddy, Joe) 
with the grave obligation I considered my friends under, to know 
nothing and say nothing about the maker of my fortune. It woidd 
all come out in good time, I observed, and in the meanwhile noth- 
ing was to be said, save that I had come into great expectations 
from a mysterious patron. Biddy nodded her head thoughtfully 
at the fire as she took up her work again, and said she would be 
very particular ; and Joe, still detaining his knees, said, " Ay, ay, 
I'll be ekervally partickler, Pip ; " and then they congratulated me 
again, and went on to express so much wonder at the notion of my 
being a gentleman, that I didn't half like it. 

Infinite pains were then taken by Biddy to convey to my sister 
some idea of what had happened. To the best of my belief, those 
efibrts entirely failed. She laughed and nodded her head a great 
many times, and even repeated after Biddy, the words "Pip " and 
" Property." But I doubt if they had more meaning in them than 
an election cry, and I cannot suggest a darker picture of her state 
of mind. 

I never could have believed it without experience, but as Joe 
and Biddy became more at their cheerfid ease again, I became quite 
gloomy. Dissatisfied with my fortune, of course I could not be ; 
but it is possible that I may have been, without quite knowing it, 
dissatisfied with myself. 

Anyhow, I sat with my elbow on my knee and my face upon 
my hand, looking into the fire, as those two talked about my going 
away, and about what they should do without me, and all that. 
And whenever I caught one of them looking at me, though never 
so pleasantly (and they often looked at me — particidarly Biddy), 
I felt offended : as if they were expressing some mistrust of me. 
Though Heaven knows they never did by word or sign. 

At those times I would get up and look out at the door ; for 
our kitchen door opened at once upon the night, and stood open on 
summer evenings to air the room. The very stars to which I then 
raised my eyes, I am afraid I took to be but poor and humble stars 
for glittering on the rustic objects among which I had passed my 
life. 

"Saturday night," said I, when we sat at our supper of bread- 
and-cheese and beer. " Five more days, and then the day before 
the day ! They'll soon go." 

" Yes, Pip," observed Joe, whose voice sounded hoUow in his 
beer mug. " They 11 soon go." 



124 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

"Soon, soon go," said Biddy. 

"I have been thinking, Joe, that when I go down-town on 
Monday, and order my new clothes, I shall tell the tailor that I'll 
come and put them on there, or that I'll have them sent to Mr. 
Piimblechook's. It woidd be very disagreeable to be stared at by 
all the people here." 

" Mr. and Mrs. Hubble might like to see you in your new gen- 
teel figure too, Pip," said Joe, industriously cutting his bread with 
his cheese on it, in the palm of his left hand, and glancing at my 
uutasted supper as if he thought of the time when we used to com- 
pare slices. " So might Wopsle. And the Jolly Bargemen might 
take it as a comphment." 

" That's just what I don't want, Joe. They would make such a 
business of it — such a coarse and common business — that I 
couldn't bear myself." 

" Ah, that indeed, Pip ! " said Joe. " If you couldn't abear 
yourself " 

Biddy asked me here, as she sat holding my sister's plate, " Have 
you thought about when you'll show yourself to Mr. Gargery, and 
your sister, and me ? You will show yourself to us ; won't you 1 " 

" Biddy," I returned with some resentment, "you are so exceed- 
ingly quick that it's clifiicult to keep up with you." 

(" She always were quick," observed Joe.) 

"If you had waited another moment, Biddy, you would have 
heard me say that I shall bring my clothes here in a bundle one 
evening — most likely on the evening before I go away." 

Biddy said no more. Handsomely forgiving her, I soon exchanged 
an affectionate good night with her and Joe, and went up to bed. 
AVhen I got into my little room, I sat down and took a long look 
at it, as a mean little room that I should soon be parted from and 
raised above, for ever. It was furnished with fresh young remem- 
brances too, and even at the same moment I fell into much the 
same confused division of mind between it and the better rooms to 
which I was going, as I had been in so often between the forge 
and Miss Havisham's, and Biddy and Estella. 

The sun had been shining brightly all day on the roof of my 
attic, and the room was warm. As I put the window open and 
stood looking out, I saw Joe come slowly forth at the dark door 
below, and take a turn or two in the air; and then I saw Biddy 
come, and bring him a pipe and light it for him. He never smoked 
so late, and it seemed to hint to me that he wanted comforting, for 
some reason or other. 

He presently stood at the door immediately beneath me, smok- 
ing his pipe, and Biddy stood there too, quietly talking to him, and 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 125 

I knew that they talked of me, for I heard my name mentioned in 
an endearing tone by both of them more than once. I would not 
have listened for more, if I could have heard more : so, I drew 
away from the window, and sat down in my one chair by the bed- 
side, feeling it very sorrowful and strange that this first night of 
my bright fortunes should be the loneliest I had ever known. 

Looking towards the open window, I saw light wreaths from 
Joe's pipe floating there, and I fancied it was like a blessing from 
Joe — not obtruded on me or paraded before me, but pervading 
the air we shared together. I put my light out, and crept into 
bed; and it was an uneasy bed now, and I never slept the old 
sound sleep in it any more. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

Morning made a considerable difference in my general prospect 
cf Life, and brightened it so much that it scarcely seemed the same. 
What lay heaviest on my mind, was, the consideration that six days 
intervened between me and the day of departure ; for, I could not 
divest myself of a misgiving that something might happen to Lon- 
don in the meanwhile, and that, when I got there, it might be 
either greatly deteriorated or clean gone. 

Joe and Biddy were very sympathetic and pleasant when I spoke 
of our approaching separation ; but they only referred to it when I 
did. After breakfast, Joe brought out my indentures from the 
press in the best parlour, and we put them in the fire, and I felt 
that I was free. With all the novelty of my emancipation on me, 
I went to church with Joe, and thought, perhaps the clergyman 
wouldn't have read that about the rich man and the kingdom of 
Heaven, if he had known all. 

After our early dinner, I strolled out alone, proposing to finish 
off" the marshes at once, and get them done with. As I passed the 
chureli, I felt (as I had felt during service in the morning) a sub- 
lime compassion for the poor creatures who were destined to go 
there, Sunday after Sunday, all their lives through, and to lie 
obscurely at last among the low green mounds. I promised my- 
self that I would do something for them one of these days, and 
formed a plan in outline for bestowing a dinner of roast-beef and 
plum-pudding, a pint of ale, and a gallon of condescension, upon 
everybody in the village. 

If I had often thought before, with something allied to shame, 
of my companionship with the fugitive whom I had once seen 



126 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

limping among those graves, what were my thoughts on this Sun- 
day, when the place recalled the wretch, ragged and shivering, with 
his felon iron and badge ! My comfort was, that it happened a 
long time ago, and that he had doubtless been transported a long 
way off, and that he was dead to me, and might be veritably dead 
into the bargain. 

No more low wet grounds, no more dykes and sluices, no more 
of these grazing cattle — though they seemed, in their dull manner, 
to wear a more respectful air now, and to face round, in order that 
they might stare as long as possible at the possessor of such great 
expectations — farewell, monotonous acquaintances of my child- 
hood, henceforth I was for London and greatness : not for smith's 
work in general and for you ! I made my exultant way to the old 
Battery, and, lying down there to consider the question whether 
Miss Havisham intended me for Estella, fell asleep. 

When I awoke, I was much surprised to find Joe sitting beside 
me, smoking his pipe. He greeted me with a cheerful smile on 
my opening my eyes, and said : 

"As being the last time, Pip, I thought I'd foller." 

"And Joe, I am very glad you did so." 

"Thankee, Pip." 

" You may be sure, dear Joe," I went on, after we had shaken 
hands, " that I shall never forget you." 

" No, no, Pip ! " said Joe, in a comfortable tone, " Tm. sure of 
that. Ay, ay, old chap ! Bless you, it were only necessary to get 
it well round in a man's mind, to be certain on it. But it took a 
bit of time to get it well round, the change come so oncommon 
plump ; didn't it ? " 

Somehow, I was not best pleased with Joe's being so mightily 
secure of me. I should have liked him to have betrayed emotion, 
or to have said, "It does you credit, Pip," or something of that 
sort. Therefore, I made no remark on Joe's first head : merely 
saying as to his second, that the tidings had indeed come suddenly, 
but that I had always wanted to be a gentleman, and had often 
and often speculated on what I would do, if I were one. 

" Have you though 1 " said Joe. " Astonishing ! " 

" It's a pity now, Joe," said I, "that you did not get on a little 
more^ when we had our lessons here ; isn't it ? " 

" Well, I don't know," returned Joe. " I'm so awful dull. I'm 
only master of my own trade. It were always a pity as I was so 
awful dull ; but it's no more of a pity now, than it was — this 
day twelvemonth — don't you see ! " 

What I had meant was, that when I came into my property and 
was able to do something for Joe, it would have been much more 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 127 

agreeable if he had been better qualified for a rise in station. He 
was so perfectly innocent of my meaning, however, that I thought 
I would mention it to Biddy in preference. 

So, when we had walked home and had had tea, I took Biddy 
into our little garden by the side of the lane, and, after throwing 
out in a general way for the elevation of her spirits, that I should 
never forget her, said I had a favour to ask of her. 

"And it is, Biddy," said I, "that you will not omit any oppor- 
tunity of helping Joe on, a little." 

"How helping him on?" asked Biddy, with a steady sort of 
glance. 

"Well ! Joe is a dear good fellow — in fact, I think he is the 
dearest fellow that ever lived — but he is rather backward in some 
things. For instance, Biddy, in his learning and his manners." 

Although I was looking at Biddy as I spoke, and although she 
opened her eyes very wide when I had spoken, she did not look at 
me. 

"Oh, his manners ! w^on't his manners do, then ? " asked Biddy, 
plucking a black-currant leaf. 

"My dear Biddy, they do very well here " 

"Oh! they do very well here?" interrupted Biddy, looking 
closely at the leaf in her hand. 

" Hear me out — but if I were to remove Joe into a higher 
sphere, as I shall hope to remove him when I fully come into my 
property, they w^ould hardly do him justice." 

"And don't you think he knows that?" asked Biddy. 

It was such a provoking question (for it had never in the most 
distant manner occurred to me), that I said, snappishly, " Biddy, 
what do you mean ? " 

Biddy having rubbed the leaf to pieces between her hands — 
and the smell of a black-currant bush has ever since recalled to me 
that evening in the little garden by the side of the lane — said, 
" Have you never considered that he may be proud ? " 

"Proud?" I repeated, with disdainful emphasis. 

"Oh! there are many kinds of pride," said Biddy, looking full 
at me and shaking her head ; " pride is not all of one kind " 

" Well ? What are you stopping for ? " said I. 

" Not all of one kind," resumed Biddy. " He may be too proud 
to let any one take him out of a place that he is competent to fill, 
and fills well and with respect. To tell you the truth, I think he 
is : though it sounds bold in me to say so, for you must know him 
far better than I do." 

"Now, Biddy," said I, "I am very sorry to see this in you. I 
did not expect to see this in you. You are envious, Biddy, and 



128 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

grudging. You are dissatisfied on account of my rise in fortune, 
and you can't help showing it." 

"If you have the heart to think so," returned Biddy, "say so. 
Say so over and over again, if you have the heart to think so." 

"If you have the heart to be so, you mean, Biddy," said I, in a 
virtuous and superior tone ; " don't put it off upon me. I am very 
sorry to see it, and it's a — it's a bad side of human nature. I did 
intend to ask you to use any little opportunities you might have 
after I was gone, of improving dear Joe. But after this, I ask 
you nothing. I am extremely sorry to see this in you, Biddy," I 
repeated. "It's a — it's a bad side of human nature." 

" Whether you scold me or approve of me," returned poor Biddy, 
" you may equally depend upon my trying to do all that lies in my 
power, here, at all times. And whatever opinion you take away 
of me, shall make no difference in my remembrance of you. Yet a 
gentleman should not be unjust neither," said Biddy, turning away 
her head. 

I again warmly repeated that it was a bad side of human nature 
(in which sentiment, waiving its application, I have since seen rea- 
son to think I was right), and I walked down the little path away 
from Biddy, and Biddy went into the house, and I went out at the 
garden gate and took a dejected stroll until supper-time ; again 
feeling it very sorrowful and strange that this, the second night of 
my bright fortunes, should be as lonely and unsatisfactory as the 
first. 

But, morning once more brightened my view, and I extended my 
clemency to Biddy, and we dropped the subject. Putting on the 
best clothes I had, I went into town as early as I could hope to 
find the shops open, and presented myself before Mr. Trabb, the 
tailor ; who was having his breakfast in the parlour behind his 
shop, and who did not think it worth his while to come out to me, 
but called me in to him. 

" Well ! " said Mr. Trabb, in a hail-fellow-well-met kind of way. 
" How are you, and what can I do for you ? " 

Mr. Trabb had sliced his hot roll into three feather beds, and 
was slipping butter in between the blankets, and covering it up. 
He was a prosperous old bachelor, and his open window looked into 
a prosperous little garden and orchard, and there was a prosperous 
iron safe let into the wall at the side of his fireplace, and I did not 
doubt that heaps of his prosperity were put away in it in bags. 

"Mr. Trabb," said I, "it's an unj^leasant thing to have to men- 
tion, because it looks like boasting ; but I have come into a hand- 
some property." 

A change passed over Mr. Trabb. He forgot the butter in bed, 



1 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 129 

got up from the bedside, and wiped his fingers on the table-cloth, 
exclaiming, " Lord bless my soul ! " 

"I am going up to my guardian in London," said I, casually 
drawing some guineas out of my pocket and looking at them ; " and 
I want a fashionable suit of clothes to go in. I wish to pay for 
them," I added — otherwise I thought he might only pretend to 
make them — "with ready money." 

"My dear sir," said Mr. Trabb, as he respectfully bent his body, 
opened his arms, and took the liberty of touching me on the outside 
of each elbow, " don't hurt me by mentioning that. May I venture 
to congratulate you ? Would you do me the favour of stepping into 
the shop ? " 

Mr. Trabb's boy was the most audacious boy in all that country- 
side. When I had entered he was sweeping the shop, and he had 
sweetened his labours by sweeping over me. He was still sweeping 
when I came out into the shop with Mr. Trabb, and he knocked 
the broom against all possible comers and obstacles, to express (as 
I understood it) equality with any blacksmith, alive or dead. 

" Hold that noise," said Mr. Trabb, with the greatest sternness, 
" or I'll knock your head off ! Do me the favour to be seated, sir. 
Now, this," said Mr. Trabb, taking down a roll of cloth, and tiding 
it out in a flowing manner over the counter, preparatory to getting 
his hand under it to show the gloss, " is a very sweet article. I 
can recommend it for your purpose, sir, because it really is extra 
super. But you shall see some others. Give me Number Four, 
you ! " (To the boy, and with a dreadfully severe stare ; foreseeing 
the danger of that miscreant's brushing me with it, or making some 
other sign of familiarity.) 

Mr. Trabb never removed his stem eye from the boy until he 
had deposited number four on the counter and was at a safe dis- 
tance again. Then, he commanded him to bring number five, and 
number eight. "And let me have none of your tricks here," said 
Mr. Trabb, "or you shall repent it, you young scoundrel, the 
longest day you have to live." 

Mr. Trabb then bent over number four, and in a sort of deferen- 
tial confidence recommended it to me as a light article for summer 
wear, an article much in vogue among the nobility and gentry, an 
article that it would ever be an honour to him to reflect upon a 
distinguished fellow-townsman's (if he might claim me for a fellow- 
townsman) having worn. "Are you bringing numbers five and 
eight, you vagabond," said Mr. Trabb to the boy after that, "or 
shall I kick you out of the shop and bring them myself?" 

I selected the materials for a suit, with the assistance of Mr. 
Trabb's judgment, and re-entered the parlour to be measured. 



130 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

For, although Mr. Trabb had my measure already, and had pre- 
viously been quite contented with it, he said apologetically that it 
"wouldn't do under existing circumstances, sir — wouldn't do at 
all." So, Mr. Trabb measured and calculated me in the parlour, 
as if I were an estate and he the finest species of surveyor, and 
gave himself such a world of trouble that I felt that no suit of 
clothes could possibly remunerate him for his pains. When he had 
at last done and had appointed to send the articles to Mr. Pumble- 
chook's on the Thursday evening, he said, mth his hand upon 
the parlour lock, " I know, sir, that London gentlemen cannot be 
expected to patronise local work, as a rule ; but if you would give 
me a turn now and then in the quality of a townsman, I should 
greatly esteem it. Good morning, sir, much obliged. — Door ! " 

The last word was flung at the boy, who had not the least 
notion what it meant. But I saw him collapse as his master 
rubbed me out with his hands, and my first decided experience of 
the stupendous power of money, was, that it had morally laid upon 
his back, Trabb's boy. 

After this memorable event, I went to the hatter's, and the 
bootmaker's, and the hosier's, and felt rather like Mother Hubbard's 
dog whose outfit required the services of so many trades. I also 
went to the coach-ofiice and took my place for seven o'clock on 
Saturday morning. It was not necessary to explain everywhere 
that I had come into a handsome property; but whenever I said 
anything to that effect, it followed that the officiating tradesman 
ceased to have his attention diverted through the window by the 
High-street, and concentrated his mind upon me. When I had 
ordered everything I wanted, I directed my steps towards Pumble- 
chook's, and, as I approached that gentleman's place of business, 
I saw him standing at his door. 

He was waiting for me with great impatience. He had been 
out early Avith the chaise-cart, and had called at the forge and 
heard the news. He had prepared a collation for me in the 
Barnwell parlour, and he too ordered his shopman to " come out 
of the gangway " as my sacred person passed. 

"My dear friend," said Mr. Pumblechook, taking me by both 
hands, when he and I and the collation were alone, " I give you 
joy of your good fortune. Well deserved, well deserved ! " 

This was coming to the point, and I thought it a sensible way 
of expressing himself. 

" To think," said Mr. Pumblechook, after snorting admiration 
at me for some moments, " that I should have been the humble 
instrument of leading up to this, is a proud reward." 

I begged Mr. Pumblechook to remember that nothing was to 
be ever said or hinted, on that point. 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 131 

"My dear young friend," said Mr. Pumblechook ; "if you will 
allow me to call you so " 

I murmured "Certainly," and Mr. Pumblechook took me by 
both hands again, and communicated a movement to his waistcoat, 
which had an emotional appearance, though it was rather low 
down, " My dear young friend, rely upon my doing my little all 
in your absence, by keeping the fact before the mind of Joseph — 
Joseph ! " said Mr. Pumblechook, in the way of a compassionate 
adjuration. " Joseph ! ! Joseph ! ! ! " Thereupon he shook his 
head and tapped it, expressing his sense of deficiency in Joseph, 

"But my dear young friend," said Mr. Pumblechook, "you 
must be hungry, you must be exhausted. Be seated. Here is a 
chicken had round from the Boar, here is a tongue had round from 
the Boar, here's one or two little things had round from the Boar, 
that I hope you may not despise. But do I," said Mr. Pumble- 
chook, getting up again the moment after he had sat down, " see 
afore me, him as I ever sported with in his times of happy 
infancy ? And may I — ■ may I % " 

This May I, meant might he shake hands % I consented, and 
he was fervent, and then sat down again. 

" Here is wine," said Mr. Pumblechook. " Let us drink. Thanks 
to Fortune, and may she ever pick out her favourites with equal 
judgment ! And yet I cannot," said Mr. Pumblechook, getting 
up again, " see afore me One — and likewise drink to One — with- 
out again expressing — May I — may I ? " 

I said he might, and he shook hands with me again, and 
emptied his glass and turned it upside down. I did the same ; 
and if I had turned myself upside down before drinking, the wine 
could not have gone more direct to my head. 

Mr. Pumblechook helped me to the liver wing, and to the best 
slice of tongue (none of those out-of-the-way No Thoroughfares of 
Pork now), and took, comparatively speaking, no care of himself 
at all. "Ah! poultry, poultry! You little thought," said Mr. 
Pumblechook, apostrophising the fowl in the dish, " when you was 
a young fledgeling, what was in store for you. You little thought 
you was to be refreshment beneath this humble roof for one as — 
Call it a weakness, if you will," said Mr. Pumblechook, getting up 
again, " but may I ? may I ? " 

It began to be unnecessary to repeat the form of saying he 
might, so he did it at once. How he ever did it so often without 
wounding himself with my knife, I don't know. 

"And your sister," he resumed, after a little steady eating, 
" which had the honour of bringing you up by hand ! It's a sad 
picter, to reflect that she's no longer equal to fully understanding 
the honour. May " 



132 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

I saw he was about to come at me again, and I stopped him. 

" We'll drink her health," said I. 

" Ah ! " cried Mr. Pumblechook, leaning back in his chair, quite 
flaccid with admiration, " that's the way you know 'em, sir ! " (I 
don't know who Sir was, but he certainly was not I, and there 
was no third person present) ; " that's the way you know the noble- 
minded, sir! Ever forgiving and ever affable. It might," said 
the servile Pumblechook, putting do^vn his untasted glass in a 
hurry and getting up again, "to a common person, have the 
appearance of repeating — but may I ? " 

When he had done it, he resumed his seat and drank to my sis- 
ter. "Let us never be blind," said Mr. Pumblechook, "to her 
faults of temper, but it is to be hoped she meant well." 

At about this time, I began to observe that he was getting 
flushed in the face; as to myself, I felt all face, steeped in wine 
and smarting. 

I mentioned to Mr. Pumblechook that I wished to have my new 
clothes sent to his house, and he was ecstatic on my so distinguish- 
ing him. I mentioned my reason for desiring to avoid observation 
in the village, and he lauded it to the skies. There was nobody 
but himself, he intimated, worthy of my confidence, and — in 
short, might he? Then he asked me tenderly if I remembered 
our boyish games at sums, and how we had gone together to have 
me bound apprentice, and, in effect, how he had ever been my 
favourite fancy and my chosen friend % If I had taken ten times 
as many glasses of wine as I had, I should have known that he 
never had stood in that relation towards me, and should in my 
heart of hearts have repudiated the idea. Yet for all that, I re- 
member feeling convinced that I had been much mistaken in him, 
and that he was a sensible practical good-hearted prime fellow. 

By degrees he fell to reposing such great confidence in me, as 
to ask my advice in reference to his own affairs. He mentioned 
that there was an opportunity for a great amalgamation and mo- 
nopoly of the corn and seed trade on those premises, if enlarged, 
such as had never occurred before in that, or any other neighbour- 
hood. What alone was wanting to the realisation of a vast fortune, 
he considered to be More Capital. Those were the two httle 
words, more capital. Now it appeared to him (Pumblechook) 
that if that capital were got into the business, through a sleeping 
partner, sir — which sleeping partner would have nothing to do 
but walk in, by self or deputy, whenever he pleased, and examine 
the books — and walk in twice a year and take his profits away 
in his pocket, to the tune of fifty per cent. — it appeared to him 
that that might be an opening for a young gentleman of spirit 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 133 

combined with property, which would be worthy of his attention. 
But what did I think ? He had great confidence in my opinion, 
and what did I think 1 I gave it as my opinion. " Wait a bit ! " 
The united vastness and distinctness of this view so struck him, 
that he no longer asked me if he might shake hands with me, 
but said he really must — and did. 

We drank all the wine, and Mr. Pumblechook pledged himself 
over and over again to keep Joseph up to the mark (I don't know 
what mark), and to render me efiicient and constant service (I 
don't know what service). He also made known to me for the 
fii'st time in my life, and certainly after having kept his secret 
wonderfully well, that he had always said of me, " That boy 
is no common boy, and mark me, his fortun' will be no common 
fortun'." He said with a tearful smile that it was a singular thing 
to think of now, and I said so too. Finally, I went out into the 
air, with a dim perception that there was something unwonted in 
the conduct of the sunshine, and found that I had slumberously 
got to the turnpike without having taken any account of the road. 

There, I was roused by Mr. Pumblechook's hailing me. He 
was a long way down the sunny street, and was making expressive 
gestures for me to stop. I stopped, and he came up breathless. 

" No, my dear friend," said he, when he had recovered wind for 
speech. " Not if I can help it. This occasion shall not entirely 
pass without that affability on your part. — May I, as an old 
friend and well-wisher ? Ma^/ 1 1 " 

We shook hands for the hundredth time at least, and he ordered 
a young carter out of my way with the greatest indignation. 
Then, he blessed me, and stood waving his hand to me until I 
had passed the crook in the road ; and then I turned into a field 
and had a long nap under a hedge before I pursued my way home. 

I had scant luggage to take with me to London, for little of 
the little I possessed was adapted to my new station. But, I 
began packing that same afternoon, and wildly packed up things 
that I knew I should want next morning, in a fiction that there 
was not a moment to be lost. 

So, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, passed; and on Friday 
morning I went to Mr. Pumblechook's, to put on my new clothes 
and pay my visit to Miss Havisham. Mr. Pumblechook's own 
room was given up to me to dress in, and was decorated with clean 
towels expressly for the event. My clothes were rather a disap- 
pointment, of course. Probably every new and eagerly expected 
garment ever put on since clothes came in, fell a trifle short of the 
wearer's expectation. But after I had had my new suit on, some 
half an hour, and had gone through an immensity of posturing 



134 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

with Mr. Pumblechook's very limited dressing-glass, in the futile 
endeavour to see my legs, it seemed to fit me better. It being 
market morning at a neighbouring town some ten miles off, Mr. 
Pumblechook was not at home. I had not told him exactly when 
I meant to leave, and was not likely to shake hands with him 
again before departing. This was all as it should be, and I went 
out in my new array : fearfully ashamed of having to pass the 
shopman, and suspicious after all that I was at a personal dis- 
advantage, something like Joe's in his Sunday suit. 

I went circuitously to Miss Havisham's by all the back ways, 
and rang at the bell constrainedly, on account of the stift' long 
fingers of my gloves. Sarah Pocket came to the gate, and posi- 
tively reeled back when she saw me so changed ; her walnut-shell 
countenance likewise, turned from brown to green and yellow. 

" You ? " said she. " You ? Good gracious ! What do you 
want ? " 

" I am going to London, Miss Pocket," said I, "and want to say 
good bye to Miss Havisham." 

I was not expected, for she left me locked in the yard, while she 
went to ask if I were to be admitted. After a very short delay, 
she returned and took me up, staring at me all the way. 

Miss Havisham was taking exercise in the room with the long 
spread table, leaning on her crutch stick. The room was lighted 
as of yore, and at the sound of her entrance, she stopped and turned. 
She was then just abreast of the rotted bride-cake. 

" Don't go, Sarah," she said. " WeU, Pip ? " 

"I start for London, Miss Havisham, to-morrow," I was exceed- 
ingly careful what I said, "and I thought you would kindly not 
mind my taking leave of you." 

"This is a gay figure, Pip," said she, making her crutch stick 
play round me, as if she, the fairy godmother who had changed me, 
were bestowing the finishing gift. 

" I have come into such good fortune since I saw you last, Miss 
Havisham," I murmured. "And I am so grateful for it. Miss 
Havisham ! " 

" Ay, ay ! " said i^he, looking at the discomfited and envious 
Sarah, with delight. " I have seen Mr. Jaggers. / have heard 
about it, Pip. So you go to-morrow ? " 

"Yes, Miss Havisham." 

" And you are adopted by a rich person ? " 

"Yes, Miss Havisham." 

"Not named?" 

" No, Miss Havisham." 

" And Mr. Jaggers is made your guardian ? " 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 135 

" Yes, Miss Havisham." 

She quite gloated on these questions and answers, so keen was 
her enjoyment of Sarah Pocket's jealous dismay, " Well ! " she 
went on; "you have a promising career before you. Be good — 
deserve it — and abide by Mr. Jaggers's instructions." She looked 
at me, and looked at Sarah, and Sarah's countenance wrung out 
of her watchful face a cruel smile. "Good bye, Pip ! — you will 
always keep the name of Pip, you know." 

"Yes, Miss Havisham." 

"Goodbye, Pip!" 

She stretched out her hand, and I went down on my knee and 
put it to my lips. I had not considered how I should take leave 
of her ; it came naturally to me at the moment, to do this. She 
looked at Sarah Pocket with triumph in her weird eyes, and so I 
left my fairy godmother, with both her hands on her crutch stick, 
standing in the midst of the dimly lighted room beside the rotten 
bride-cake that was hidden in cobwebs. 

Sarah Pocket conducted me down, as if I were a ghost who must 
be seen out. She could not get over my appearance, and was in 
the last degree confounded. I said " Good bye. Miss Pocket ; " 
but she merely stared, and did not seem collected enough to know 
that I had spoken. Clear of the house, I made the best of my 
way back to Pumblechook's, took off my new clothes, made them 
into a bundle, and went back home in my older dress, carrying 
it — to speak the truth — much more at my ease too, though I 
had the bundle to carry. 

And now, those six days which were to have run out so slowly, 
had run out fast and were gone, and to-morrow looked me in the 
face more steadily than I could look at it. As the six evenings 
had dwindled away to five, to four, to three, to two, I had become 
more and more appreciative of the society of Joe and Biddy. On 
this last evening, I dressed myself out in my new clothes, for their 
delight, and sat in my splendour until bedtime. We had a hot 
supper on the occasion, graced by the inevitable roast fowl, and we 
had some flip to finish with. We were all very low, and none the 
higher for pretending to be in spirits. 

I was to leave our village at five in the morning, carrying my 
little hand-portmanteau, and I had told Joe that I wished to walk 
away all alone. I am afraid — sore afraid — that this purpose 
originated in my sense of the contrast there would be between me 
and Joe, if we went to the coach together. I had pretended with 
myself that there was nothing of this taint in the arrangement ; 
but when I went up to my little room on this last night, I felt 
- s/^TiDelled to admit that it might be done so, and had an impulse 



136 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

upon me to go down again and entreat Joe to walk with me in the 
morning. I did not. 

All night there were coaches in my broken sleep, going to wrong 
places instead of to London, and having in the traces, now dogs, 
now cats, now pigs, now men — never horses. Fantastic failures 
of journeys occupied me until the day dawned and the birds were 
singing. Then, I got up and partly dressed, and sat at the win- 
dow to take a last look out, and in taking it fell asleep. 

Biddy was astir so early to get my breakfast, that, although I 
did not sleep at the window an hour, I smelt the smoke of the 
kitchen fire when I started up with a terrible idea that it must be 
late in the afternoon. But long after that, and long after I heard 
the clinking of the teacups and was quite ready, I wanted the 
resolution to go downstairs. After all, I remained up there, 
repeatedly unlocking and unstrapping my small portmanteau and 
locking and strapping it up again, until Biddy called to me that I 
w^as late. 

It was a hurried breakfast with no taste in it. I got up from 
the meal, saying with a sort of briskness, as if it had only just 
occurred to me, " Well ! I suppose I must be off ! " and then I 
kissed my sister, who was laughing, and nodding and shaking in her 
usual chair, and kissed Biddy, and threw my arms around Joe's 
neck. Then I took up my little portmanteau and walked out. 
The last I saw of them was, when I presently heard a scuffle 
behind me, and looking back, saAv Joe throwing an old shoe after 
me and Biddy throwing another old shoe. I stopped then, to 
wave my hat, and dear old Joe waved his strong right arm above 
his head, crying huskily, "Hooroar ! " and Biddy put her apron to 
her face. 

I walked away at a good pace, thinking it was easier to go than 
I had supposed it would be, and reflecting that it would never 
have done to have an old shoe thrown after the coach, in sight of 
all the High-street. I whistled and made nothing of going. But 
the village was very peaceful and quiet, and the light mists were 
solemnly rising, as if to show me the world, and I had been so 
innocent and little there, and all beyond was so unknown and great, 
that in a moment with a strong heave and sob I broke into tears. 
It was by the finger-post at the end of the village, and I laid my 
hand upon it, and said, " Good bye, my dear, dear friend ! " 

Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they 
are rain upon the blinding dust of^arth, overlying our hard hearts. 
I was better after I had cried, than before — more sorry, more 
aware of my own ingratitude, more gentle. If I had cried before, I 
should have had Joe with me then. 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 137 

So subdued I was by those tears, and by their breaking out again 
in the course of the quiet walk, that when I was on the coach, and 
it was clear of the town, I deliberated with an aching heart whether 
I would not get down when we changed horses and walk back, and 
have another evening at home, and a better parting. We changed, 
and I had not made up my mind, and still reflected for my comfort 
that it would be quite practicable to get down and walk back, when 
we changed again. And while I was occupied with those delibera- 
tions, I would fancy an exact resemblance to Joe in some man com- 
ing along the road towards us, and my heart would beat high. — As 
if he could possibly be there ! 

We changed again, and yet again, and it was now too late and 
too far to go back, and I went on. And the mists had all sol- 
emnly risen now, and the world lay spread before me. 

THIS IS THE END OF THE FIKST STAGE OF PIP's EXPECTATIONS. 



CHAPTER XX. 

The journey from our town to the metropolis, was a journey of 
about five hours. It was a little past mid-day when the four-horse 
stage-coach by which I was a passenger, got into the ravel of traffic 
frayed out about the Cross Keys, Wood-street, Cheapside, London. 

We Britons h^ at that time particularly settled that it was 
treasonable to doubt our having and our being the best of every- 
thing : otherwise, while I was scared by the immensity of London, 
I think I might have had some faint doubts whether it was not 
rather ugly, crooked, narrow, and dirty. 

Mr. Jaggers had duly sent me his address ; it was Little Britain, 
and he had written after it on his card, "just out of Smithfield, 
and close by the coach-office." Nevertheless, a hackney-coachman, 
who seemed to have as many capes to his greasy great-coat as he 
was years old, packed me up in his coach and hemmed me in with 
a folding and jingling barrier of steps, as if he were going to take 
me fifty miles. His getting on his box, which I remember to have 
been decorated with an old weather-stained pea-green hammercloth, 
moth-eaten into rags, was quite a work of time. It was a wonder- 
ful equipage, with six great coronets outside, and ragged things 
behind for I don't know how many footmen to hold on by, and a 
harrow below them, to prevent amateur footmen from yielding to 
the temptation. 

I had scarcely had time to enjoy the coach and to think how 



138 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

like a straw-yard it was, and yet how like a rag-shop, and to won- 
der why the horses' nose-bags were kept inside, when I observed 
the coachman beginning to get down, as if we were going to stop 
presently. And stop we presently did, in a gloomy street, at cer- 
tain offices with an open door, whereon was painted Mr. Jaggers. 

"How much?" I asked the coachman. 

The coachman answered, "A shiUing — unless you wish to make 
it more." 

I naturally said I had no wish to make it more. 

" Then it must be a shilling," observed the coachman. " I don't 
want to get into trouble. I know him I " He darkly closed an 
eye at Mr. Jaggers's name, and shook his head. 

When he had got his shilling, and had in course of time com- 
pleted the ascent to his box, and had got away (which appeared to 
relieve his mind), I went into the front office with my little port- 
manteau in my hand, and asked, was Mr. Jaggers at home 1 

"He is not," returned the clerk. "He is in Court at present. 
Am I addressing Mr. Pip ? " 

I signified that he was addi'essing Mr. Pip. 

"Mr. Jaggers left word would you wait in his room. He 
couldn't say how long he might be, having a case on. But it 
stands to reason, his time being valuable, that he won't be longer 
than he can help." 

With those words, the clerk opened a door, and ushered me into 
an inner chamber at the back. Here we found a gentleman with 
one eye, in a velveteen suit and knee-breeches, wtio wiped his nose 
with his sleeve on being interrupted in the perusal of the news- 
paper. 

" Go and wait outside, Mike," said the clerk. 

I began to say that I hoped I was not interrupting when 

the clerk shoved this gentleman out with as little ceremony as I 
ever saw used, and tossing his fur cap out after him, left me alone. 

Mr. Jaggers's room was lighted by a skylight only, and was a 
most dismal place ; the skylight, eccentrically patched like a broken 
head, and the distorted adjoining houses looking as if they had 
twisted themselves to peep down at me through it. There were 
not so many papers about, as I should have expected to see ; and 
there were some odd objects about, that I should not have expected 
to see — such as an old rusty pistol, a sword in a scabbard, several 
strange-looking boxes and packages, and two dreadful casts on a 
shelf, of faces peculiarly swollen, and twitchy about the nose. Mr. 
Jaggers's own high-backed chair was of deadly black horse-hair, 
\vith rows of brass nails round it, like a coffin ; and I fancied I 
could see how he leaned back in it, and bit his forefinger at the 



I 



GKEAT EXPECTATIONS. 139 

clients. The room was but small, and the clients seemed to have 
had a habit of backing up against the wall : the wall, especially- 
opposite to Mr. Jaggers's chaii*, being greasy with shoulders. I 
recalled, too, that the one-eyed gentleman had shuffled forth against 
the wall when I was the innocent cause of his being turned out. 

I sat down in the cliental chair placed over against Mr. Jaggers's 
chair, and became fascinated by the dismal atmosphere of the 
place. I called to mind that the clerk had the same air of 
knowing something to everybody else's disadvantage, as his master 
had. I wondered how many other clerks there were upstairs, and 
whether they all claimed to have the same detrimental mastery of 
their fellow-creatures. I wondered what was the history of all the 
odd litter about the room, and how it came there. I wondered 
whether the two swollen faces were of Mr. Jaggers's family, and, 
if, he were so unfortunate as to have had a pair of such ill-looking 
relations, why he stuck them on that dusty perch for the blacks 
and flies to settle on, instead of giving them a place at home. Of 
course I had no experience of a London summer day, and my 
spirits may have been oppressed by the hot exhausted air, and by 
the dust and grit that lay thick on everything. But I sat won- 
dering and waiting in Mr. Jaggers's close room, until I really could 
not bear the two casts on the shelf above Mr. Jaggers's chair, and 
got up and went out. 

When I told the clerk that I would take a turn in the air while 
I waited, he advised me to go round the corner and I shoidd come 
into Smithfield. So, I came into Smithfield; and the shameful 
place, being all asmear with filth and fat and blood and foam, 
seemed to stick to me. So I rubbed it off ^ith all possible speed 
by turning into a street where I saw the great black dome of Saint 
Paul's bulging at me from behind a grim stone building which a 
bystander said was Newgate Prison. Following the wall of the 
jail, I found the roadway covered with straw to deaden the noise 
of passing vehicles ; and from this, and from the quantity of people 
standing about, smelling strongly of spirits and beer, I inferred 
that the trials were on. 

While I looked about me here, an exceedingly dirty and partially 
drunk minister of justice asked me if I would like to step in and 
hear a trial or so : informing me that he could give me a front place 
for half-a-cro^Ti, whence I shoidd command a full view of the Lord 
Chief Justice in his vdg and robes — mentioning that awful person- 
age like waxwork, and presently offering him at the reduced price of 
eighteenpence. As I dechned the proposal on the plea of an appoint- 
ment, he was so good as to take me into a yard and show me where 
the gallows was kept, and also where people were publicly whipped, 



140 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

and then he showed me the Debtors' Door, out of which culprits 
came to be hanged ; heightening the interest of that dreadful portal 
by giving me to understand that " four on 'em " would come out at 
that door the day after to-morrow at eight in the morning to be 
killed in a row. This was horrible, and gave me a sickening idea 
of London : the more so as the Lord Chief Justice's proprietor wore 
(from his hat down to his boots and up again to his pocket-handker- 
chief inclusive) mildewed clothes, which had evidently not belonged 
to him originally, and which, I took it into my head, he had bought 
cheap of the executioner. Under these circumstances I thought 
myself well rid of him for a shilling. 

I dropped into the office to ask if Mr. Jaggers had come in yet, 
and I found he had not, and I strolled out again. This time, I 
made the tour of Little Britain, and turned into Bartholomew Close ; 
and now I became aware that other people were waiting about for 
Mr. Jaggers, as well as I. There were two men of secret appearance 
lounging in Bartholomew Close, and thoughtfully fitting their feet 
into the cracks of the pavement as they talked together, one of 
whom said to the other when they first passed me, that " Jaggers 
would do it if it was to be done." There was a knot of three men 
and two women standing at a corner, and one of the women was 
crying on her dirty shawl, and the other comforted her by saying, 
as she pulled her own shawl over her shoulders, " Jaggers is for 
him, 'Melia, and what more could you have ? " There was a red- 
eyed little Jew who came into the Close while I was loitering there, 
in company with a second little Jew whom he sent upon an errand ; 
and while the messenger was gone, I remarked this Jew, who was 
of a highly excitable temperament, performing a jig of anxiety under 
a lamp-post, and accompanying himself, in a kind of frenzy, with 
the words, " Oh Jaggerth, Jaggerth, Jaggerth ! all otherth ith Cag- 
Maggerth, give me Jaggerth ! " These testimonies to the popularity 
of my guardian made a deep impression on me, and I admired and 
wondered more than ever. 

At length, as I was looking out at the iron gate of Bartholomew 
Close into Little Britain, I saw Mr. Jaggers coming across the 
road towards me. All the others who were waiting, saw him at the 
same time, and there was quite a rush at him. Mr. Jaggers, putting 
a hand on my shoulder and walking me on at his side without 
saying anything to me, addressed himself to his followers. 

First, he took the two secret men. 

"Now, I have nothing to saytoyo?^," said Mr. Jaggers, throwing 
his finger at them. " I want to know no more than I know. As 
to the result, it's a toss-up. I told you from the first it was a toss- 
up. Have you paid Wemmick ? " 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 141 

'* We made the money up this morning, sir," said one of the men 
submissively, while the other perused Mr. Jaggers's face. 

" I don't ask you when you made it up, or where, or whether 
you made it up at all. Has Wemmick got it 1 " 

"Yes, sir," said both the men together. 

"Very well; then you may go. Now, I won't have it ! " said 
Mr. Jaggers, waving his hand at them to put them behind him. 
" If you say a word to me, I'll throw up the case." 

" We thought, Mr. Jaggers " one of the men began, pulling 

off his hat. 

"That's what I told you not to do," said Mr. Jaggers. ^^You 
thought ! I think for you ; that's enough for you. If I want you, 
I know where to find you ; I don't want you to find me. Now I 
won't have it. I won't hear a word." 

The two men looked at one another as Mr. Jaggers waved them 
behind again, and humbly fell back and were heard no more. 

"And now you!^'' said Mr. Jaggers, suddenly stopping, and 
turning on the two women with the shawls, from whom the three men 
had meekly separated — " Oh ! Amelia, is it ? " 

"Yes, Mr. Jaggers." 

"And do you remember," retorted Mr. Jaggers, "that but for 
me you wouldn't be here and couldn't be here ? " 

" Oh yes, sir ! " exclaimed both women together. " Lord bless 
you, sir, well we knows that ! " 

"Then why," said Mr. Jaggers, "do you come here?" 

" My Bill, sir ! " the crying woman pleaded. 

" Now, I tell you what ! " said Mr. Jaggers. " Once for all. If 
you don't know that your Bill's in good hands, I know it. And if 
you come here, bothering about your Bill, I'll make an example of 
both your Bill and you, and let him slip through my fingers. Have 
you paid AVemmick % " 

" Oh yes, sir ! Every farden." 

"Very well. Then you have done all you have got to do. Say 
another word — one single word — and Wemmick shall give you 
your money back." 

This terrible threat caused the two women to fall off immediately. 
No one remained now but the excitable Jew, who had already raised 
the skirts of Mr. Jaggers's coat to his lips several times. 

" I don't know this man % " said Mr. Jaggers, in the most devas- 
tating strain. " AVhat does this fellow want % " 

"Ma thear Mithter Jaggerth. Hown brother to Habraham 
Latharuth % " 

" AVho's he % " said Mr. Jaggers. " Let go of my coat." 

The suitor, kissing the hem of the garment again before relin- 



142 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

quishing it, replied, " Habraham Latharuth, on thuthpithion of 
plate." 

"You're too late," said Mr. Jaggers. " I am over the way." 

" Holy father, Mithter Jaggerth ! " cried my excitable acquaint- 
ance, turning white, "don't thay you're again Habraham Latha- 
ruth ! " 

"I am," said Mr. Jaggers, "and there's an end of it. Get out 
of the way." 

"Mithter Jaggerth! Half a moment! My hown cuthen'th 
gone to Mithter Wemmick at thith prethenth minute to hoffer him 
hauy termth. Mithter Jaggerth ! Half a quarter of a moment ! 
If you'd have the condethenthun to be brought off from the t'other 
thide — at any thuperior prithe ! — money no object! — Mithter 
Jaggerth — Mithter ! " 

My guardian threw his supplicant off with supreme indifference, 
and left him dancing on the pavement as if it were red-hot. With- 
out further interruption, we reached the front office, where we found 
the clerk and the man in velveteen with the fur cap. 

"Here's Mike," said the clerk, getting down from his stool, and 
approaching Mr. Jaggers confidentially. 

" Oh ! " said Mr. Jaggers, turning to the man who was pulling 
a lock of hair in the middle of his forehead, like the Bull in Cock 
Robin pulling at the bell-rope ; " your man comes on this afternoon. 
Well?" 

"Well, Mas'r Jaggers," returned Mike, in the voice of a sufferer 
from a constitutional cold; "arter a deal o' trouble, I've found 
one, sir, as might do." 

" What is he prepared to swear ? " 

"Well, Mas'r Jaggers," said Mike, wiping his nose on his fur 
cap this time ; "in a general way, anythink." 

Mr. Jaggers suddenly became most irate. " Now, I warned you 
before," said he, throwing his forefinger at the terrified client, 
" that if ever you presumed to talk in that way here, I'd make an 
example of you. You infernal scoundrel, how dare you tell me 
that?" 

The client looked scared, but bewildered too, as if he were uncon- 
scious what he had done. 

" Spooney ! " said the clerk, in a low voice, giving him a stir 
with his elbow. " Soft Head ! Need you say it face to face 1 " 

"Now, I ask you, you blundering booby," said my guardian, 
very sternly, " once more and for the last time, what the man you 
have brought here is prepared to swear 1 " 

Mike looked hard at my guardian, as if he were trying to learn 
a lesson from his face, and slowly replied, " Ayther to character, or 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 143 

to having been in his company and never left him all the night in 
question." 

" Now, be careful. In what station of life is this man ? " 

Mike looked at his cap, and looked at the floor, and looked at 
the ceiling, and looked at the clerk, and even looked at me, before 
beginning to reply in a nervous manner, " We've dressed him up 
like " when my guardian blustered out : 

' ' What ? You WILL, will you ? " 

("Spooney! " added the clerk again, with another stir.) 

After some helpless casting about, Mike brightened and began 
again : 

" He is dressed like a 'spectable pieman. A sort of a pastry- 
cook." 

"Is he here 1 " asked my guardian. 

"I left him," said Mike, "a setting on some doorsteps round the 
corner." 

" Take him past that window, and let me see him." 

The window indicated, was the ofiice window. We all three went 
to it, behind the wire blind, and presently saw the client go by in 
an accidental manner, with a murderous-looking tall individual, in 
a short suit of white linen and a paper cap. This guileless confec- 
tioner was not by any means sober, and had a black eye in the 
green stage of recovery, which was painted over. 

" Tell him to take his witness away directly," said my guardian 
to the clerk, in extreme disgust, " and ask him what he means by 
bringing such a fellow as that." 

My guardian then took me into his own room, and while he 
lunched, standing, from a sandwich-box and a pocket flask of sherry 
(he seemed to bully his very sandwich as he ate it), informed me 
what arrangements he had made for me. I was to go to " Bar- 
nard's Inn," to young Mr. Pocket's rooms, where a bed had been 
sent in for my accommodation ; I was to remain with young Mr. 
Pocket until Monday; on Monday I was to go with him to his 
father's house on a visit, that I might try how I liked it. Also, 
I was told what my allowance was to be — it was a very liberal 
one — and had handed to me from one of my guardian's drawers, 
the cards of certain tradesmen with whom I was to deal for all 
kinds of clothes, and such other things as I could in reason want. 
" You will find your credit good, Mr. Pip," said my guardian, 
whose flask of sherry smelt like a whole cask-full, as he hastily 
refreshed himself, " but I shall by this means be able to check 
your bills, and to pull you up if I find you outrunning the con- 
stable. Of course you'll go wrong somehow, but that's no fault of 
mine." 



144 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

After I had pondered a little over this encouraging sentigient, I 
asked Mr. Jaggers if I could send for a coach ? He said it was 
not worth while, I was so near my destination; Wemmick should 
walk round with me, if I pleased. 

I then found that Wemmick was the clerk in the next room. 
Another clerk was rung down from upstairs to take his place 
while he was out, and I accompanied him into the street, after 
shaking hands with my guardian. We found a new set of people 
lingering outside, but Wemmick made a way among them by say- 
ing coolly yet decisively, " I tell you it's no use ; he won't have a 
word to say to one of you ; " and we soon got clear of them, and 
went on side by side. 



CHAPTER XXI. 

Casting my eyes on Mr. Wemmick as we went along, to see 
what he was like in the light of day, I found him to be a dry man, 
rather short in stature, with a square w^ooden face, whose expres- 
sion seemed to have been imperfectly chipped out with a dull-edged 
chisel. There were some marks in it that might have been dim- 
ples, if the material had been softer and the instrument finer, but 
which, as it was, were only dints. The chisel had made three or 
four of these attempts at embellishment over his nose, but had 
given them up without an effort to smooth them off. I judged 
him to be a bachelor from the frayed condition of his linen, and 
he appeared to have sustained a good many bereavements ; for he 
wore at least four mourning rings, besides a brooch representing a 
lady and a weeping willow at a tomb with an urn on it. I noticed, 
too, that several rings and seals hung at his watch chain, as if he 
were quite laden with remembrances of departed friends. He had 
glittering eyes — small, keen, and black — and thin wide mottled 
lips. He had had them, to the best of my belief, from forty to 
fifty years. 

" So you were never in London before ? " said Mr. Wemmick to 
me. 

"No," said I. 

"/was new here once," said Mr. Wemmick. "Rum to think 
of now ! " 

"You are well acquainted with it now?" 

"Why, yes," said Mr. Wemmick. "I know the moves of it." 

"Is it a very wicked place 1 " I asked, more for the sake of say- 
ing something than for information. 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 145 

" You may get cheated, robbed, and murdered, in London. But 
there are plenty of people anywhere, who'll do that for you." 

" If there is bad blood between you and them," said I, to soften 
it oft' a little. 

"Gh! I don't know about bad blood," returned Mr. Wemmiek. 
" There's not much bad blood about. They'll do it, if there's any- 
thing to be got by it." 

"That makes it worse." 

"You think so?" returned Mr. Wemmiek. "Much about the 
same, I should say." 

He wore his hat on the back of his head, and looked straight 
before him : walking in a self-contained way as if there were noth- 
ing in the streets to claim his attention. His mouth was such a 
post-office of a mouth that he had a mechanical appearance of 
smiling. We had got to the top of Holborn Hill before I knew 
that it was merely a mechanical appearance, and that he was not 
smiling at all. 

"Do you know where Mr. Matthew Pocket lives?" I asked 
Mr. Wemmiek. 

"Yes," said he, nodding in the direction. "At Hammersmith, 
west of London." 

"Is that far?" 

"Well! Say five miles." 

" Do you know him ? " 

"Why, you are a regular cross-examiner !" said Mr. Wemmiek, 
looking at me with an approving air. "Yes, I know him. / 
know him ! " 

There was an air of toleration or depreciation about his utter- 
ance of these words, that rather depressed me ; and I was still 
looking sideways at his block of a face in search of any encourag- 
ing note to the text, when he said here we were at Barnard's Inn, 
My depression was not alleviated by the announcement, for, I had 
supposed that establishment to be an hotel kept by Mr. Barnard, 
to which the Blue Boar in our town was a mere public-house. 
Whereas I now found Barnard to be a disembodied spirit, or a fiction, 
and his inn the dingiest collection of shabby buildings ever squeezed 
together in a rank corner as a club for Tom-cats. 

We entered this haven through a wicket-gate, and were disgorged 
by an introductory passage into a melancholy little square that 
looked to me like a flat burying-ground. I thought it had the 
most dismal trees in it, and the most dismal sparrows, and the 
most dismal cats, and the most dismal houses (in number half a 
dozen or so), that I had ever seen. I thought the windows of the 
sets of chambers into which those houses were divided, were in 



146 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

every stage of dilapidated blind and curtain, crippled flower- pot, 
cracked glass, dusty decay, and miserable makeshift ; while To Let 
To Let To Let, glared at me from empty rooms, as if no new 
wretches ever came there, and the vengeance of the soul of Barnard 
were being slowly appeased by the gradual suicide of the present 
occupants and their unholy interment under the gravel. A frouzy 
morning of soot and smoke attired this forlorn creation of Barnard, 
and it had strewed ashes on its head, and was undergoing penance 
and humihation as a mere dust-hole. Thus far my sense of sight ; 
while dry rot and wet rot and all the silent rots that rot in neg- 
lected roof and cellar — rot of rat and mouse and bug and coach- 
ing-stables near at hand besides — addressed themselves faintly to 
my sense of smell, and moaned, " Try Barnard's Mixture." 

So imperfect was this realisation of the first of my great expec- 
tations, that I looked in dismay at Mr, Wemmick. " Ah ! " said 
he, mistaking me; "the retirement reminds you of the country. 
So it does me." 

He led me into a corner and conducted me up a flight of stairs 
— which appeared to me to be slowly collapsing into sawdust, so 
that one of those days the upper lodgers would look out at their 
doors and find themselves without the means of coming down — to 
a set of chambers on the top floor. Mr. Pocket, Jun., was 
painted on the door, and there was a label on the letter-box, 
"Return shortly." 

"He hardly thought you'd come so soon," Mr. Wemmick ex- 
plained. " You don't want me any more ? " 

"No, thank you," said I. 

"As I keep the cash," Mr. Wemmick observed, "we shall most 
likely meet pretty often. Good day." 

"Good day." 

I put out my hand, and Mr. Wemmick at first looked at it as if 
he thought I wanted something. Then he looked at me, and said, 
correcting himself, 

"To be sure ! Yes. You're in the habit of shaking hands ? " 

I was rather confused, thinking it must be out of the London 
fashion, but said yes. 

" I have got so out of it ! " said Mr. Wemmick — " except at 
last. Very glad, I'm sure, to make your acquaintance. Good 
day ! " 

When we had shaken hands and he was gone, I opened the 
staircase window and had nearly beheaded myself, for, the lines 
had rotted away, and it came down like the guillotine. Happily 
it was so quick that I had not put my head out. After this 
escape, I was content to take a foggy view of the Inn through the 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 147 

window's encrusting dirt, and to stand dolefully looking out, saying 
to myself that London was decidedly overrated. 

Mr. Pocket, Junior's, idea of Shortly was not mine, for I had 
nearly maddened myself with looking out for half an hour, and had 
written my name with my finger several times in the dirt of every 
pane in the window, before I heard footsteps on the stairs. Grad- 
ually there arose before me the hat, head, neckcloth, waistcoat, 
trousers, boots, of a member of society of about my own standing. 
He had a paper-bag under each arm and a pottle of strawbemes in 
one hand, and was out of breath. 

"Mr. Pip?" said he. 

" Mr. Pocket ? " said I. 

"Dear me!" he exclaimed. "I am extremely sorry; but I 
knew there was a coach from your part of the country at midday, 
and I thought you would come by that one. The fact is, I have 
been out on your account — not that that is any excuse — for I 
thought, coming from the country, you might like a little fruit 
after dinner, and I went to Covent Garden Market to get it good." 

For a reason that I had, I felt as if my eyes would start out of 
my head. I acknowledged his attention incoherently, and began 
to think this was a dream. 

" Dear me I " said Mr. Pocket, Junior. " This door sticks so ! " 

As he was fast making jam of his fruit by wrestling with the 
door while the paper-bags were under his arms, I begged him to 
allow me to hold them. He relinquished them with an agreeable 
smile, and combated with the door as if it were a wild beast. It 
yielded so suddenly at last, that he staggered back upon me, and I 
staggered back upon the opposite door, and we both laughed. But 
still I felt as if my eyes must start out of my head, and as if this 
must be a dream. 

"Pray come in," said Mr. Pocket, Junior. "Allow me to lead 
the way. I am rather bare here, but I hope you'll be able to 
make out tolerably well till iSIonday. My father thought you 
would get on more agreeably through to-morrow with me than with 
him, and might like to take a walk about London. I am sure I 
shall be very happy to show London to you. As to our table, you 
won't find that bad, I hope, for it will be supplied from our coffee- 
house here, and (it is only right I should add) at your expense, 
such being Mr. Jaggers's directions. As to our lodging, it's not by 
any means splendid, because I have my own bread to earn, and my 
father hasn't anything to give me, and I shouldn't be \villing to 
take it, if he had. This is our sitting-room — just such chairs and 
tables and carpet and so forth, you see, as they could spare from 
home. You mustn't give me credit for the table-cloth and spoons 



148 GEE AT EXPECTATIONS. 

and castors, because they come for you from the coffee-house. 
This is my Uttle bedroom ; rather musty, but Barnard's is musty. 
This is your bedroom ; the furniture's hired for the occasion, but I 
trust it will answer the purpose ; if you should want anything, I'll 
go and fetch it. The chambers are retired, and we shall be alone 
together, but we shan't fight, I dare say. But, dear me, I beg 
your pardon, you're holding the fruit all this time. Pray let me 
take these bags from you. I am quite ashamed." 

As I stood opposite to Mr. Pocket, Junior, delivering him the 
bags, One, Two, I saw the starting appearance come into his own 
eyes that I knew to be in mine, and he said, falling back : 
" Lord bless me, you're the prowling boy ! " 
"And you," said I, "are the pale young gentleman! " 



CHAPTER XXII. 

The pale young gentleman and I stood contemplating one another 
in Barnard's Inn, until we both burst out laughing. " The idea of 
its being you ! " said he. "The idea of its being you/" said I. 
And then we contemplated one another afresh, and laughed again. 
" Well ! " said the pale young gentleman, reaching out his hand 
good-humouredly, " it's all over now, I hope, and it will be magnan- 
imous in you if you'll forgive me for having knocked you about so." 

I derived from this speech that Mr. Herbert Pocket (for Herbert 
was the pale young gentleman's name) still rather confounded his 
intention with his execution. But I made a modest reply, and we 
shook hands warmly. 

"You hadn't come into your good fortune at that time?" said 
Herbert Pocket. 

"No," said I. 

" No," he acquiesced : "I heard it had happened very lately. I 
was rather on the look-out for good fortune then." 

"Indeed?" 

"Yes. Miss Havisham had sent for me, to see if she could take 
a fancy to me. But she couldn't — at all events, she didn't." 

I thought it polite to remark that I was surprised to hear that. 

" Bad taste," said Herbert, laughing, " but a fact. Yes, she had 
sent for me on a trial visit, and if I had come out of it successfully, 
I suppose I should have been provided for ; perhaps I should have 
been what-you-may-called it to Estella." 

" What's that ? " I asked, with sudden gravity. 

He was arranging his fruit in plates while we talked, which di- 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 149 

vided his attention, and was the cause of his having made this lapse 
of a word. "Affianced," he explained, still busy with the fruit. 
"Betrothed. Engaged. What's-his-named. Any word of that 
sort." 

" How did you bear your disappointment ? " I asked. 

" Pooh ! " said he, "I didn't care much for it. She's a Tartar." 

"MissHavisham?" 

" I don't say no to that, but I meant Estella. That girl's hard 
and haughty and capricious to the last degree, and has been brought 
up by Miss Havisham to wreak revenge on all the male sex." 

"What relation is she to Miss Havisham?" 

" None," said he. " Only adopted." 

" Why should she wreak revenge on all the male sex ? What 
revenge ? " 

" Lord, Mr. Pip ! " said he. " Don't you know ? " 

"No," said I. 

" Dear me ! It's quite a story, and shall be saved till dinner- 
time. And now let me take the liberty of asking you a question. 
How did you come there, that day ? " 

I told him, and he was attentive until I had finished, and then 
burst out laughing again, and asked me if I was sore afterwards 1 
I didn't ask him if he was, for my conviction on that point was 
perfectly established. 

"Mr. Jaggers is your guardian, I understand?" he went on. 

"Yes." 

" You know he is Miss Havisham's man of business and solicitor, 
and has her confidence when nobody else has ? " 

This was bringing me (I felt) towards dangerous ground. I an- 
swered with a constraint I made no attempt to disguise, that I had 
seen Mr. Jaggers in Miss Havisham's house on the very day of our 
combat, but never at any other time, and that I believed he had no 
recollection of having ever seen me there. 

" He was so obliging as to suggest my father for your tutor, and 
he called on my father to propose it. Of course he knew about my 
father from his connection with Miss Havisham. My father is Miss 
Havisham's cousin ; not that that implies familiar intercourse be- 
tween them, for he is a bad courtier and will not propitiate her." 

Herbert Pocket had a frank and easy way with him that was 
very taking. I had never seen any one then, and I have never seen 
any one since, who more strongly expressed to me, in every look and 
tone, a natural incapacity to do anything secret and mean. There 
was something wonderfully hopeful about his general air, and some- 
thing that at the same time whispered to me he would never be very 
successful or rich. I don't know how this was. I became imbued 



150 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

with the notion on that first occasion before we sat down to dinner, 
but I cannot define by what means. 

He was still a pale young gentleman, and had a certain conquered 
languor about him in the midst of his spirits and briskness, that did 
not seem indicative of natural strength. He had not a handsome 
face, but it was better than handsome : being extremely amiable 
and cheerful. His figure was a little ungainly, as in the days when 
my knuckles had taken such liberties with it, but it looked as if 
it would always be light and young. Whether Mr. Trabb's local 
work would have sat more gracefully on him than on me, may be 
a question ; but I am conscious that he carried off his rather old 
clothes, much better than I carried off my new suit. 

As he was so communicative, I felt that reserve on my part would 
be a bad return unsuited to our years. I therefore told him my small 
story, and laid stress on my being forbidden to inquire who my 
benefactor was. I further mentioned that as I had been brought 
up a blacksmith in a country place, and knew very little of the 
ways of politeness, I would take it as a great kindness in him if he 
would give me a hint whenever he saw me at a loss or going wrong. 

"With pleasure," said he, "though I venture to prophesy that 
you'll want very few hints. I dare say we shall be often together, 
and I should like to banish any needless restraint between us. 
Will you do me the favour to begin at once to call me by my Chris- 
tian name, Herbert ? " 

I thanked him, and said I would. I informed him in exchange 
that my Christian name was Philip. 

"I don't take to Philip," said he, smiling, "for it sounds like a 
moral boy out of the spelling-book, who was so lazy that he fell 
into a pond, or so fat that he couldn't see out of his eyes, or so ava- 
ricious that he locked up his cake till the mice ate it, or so deter- 
mined to" go a bird's-nesting that he got himself eaten by bears who 
lived handy in the neighbourhood. I tell you what I should like. 
We are so harmonious, and you have been a blacksmith — would 
you mind it ? " 

" I shouldn't mind anything that you propose," I answered, " but 
I don't understand you." 

" Would you mind Handel for a familiar name 1 There's a 
charming piece of music by Handel, called the Harmonious Black- 
smith." 

" I should like it very much." 

"Then, my dear Handel," said he, turning round as the door 
opened, " here is the dinner, and I must beg of you to take the top 
of the table, because the dinner is of your providing." 

This I would not hear of, so he took the top, and I faced him. 



GREAT EXPECTATIOXS. 151 

It was a nice little dinner — seemed to me then, a very Lord 
Mayor's Feast — and it acquired additional relish from being eaten 
under those independent circumstances, with no old people by, and 
with London all around us. This again was heightened by a cer- 
tain gipsy character that set the banquet off; for, while the table 
was, as Mr. Pumblechook might have said, the lap of luxury — 
being entirely furnished forth from the coffee-house — the circum- 
jacent region of sitting-room was of a comparatively pastureless and 
shifty character : imposing on the waiter the wandering habits of 
putting the covers on the floor (where he fell over them), the 
melted butter in the armchair, the bread on the bookshelves, the 
cheese in the coalscuttle, and the boiled fowl into my bed in 
the next room — where I found much of its parsley and butter in 
a state of congelation when I retired for the night. All this made 
the feast delightful, and when the waiter was not there to watch 
me, my pleasure was without alloy. 

We had made some progress in the dinner, when I reminded 
Herbert of his promise to tell me about Miss Havisham. 

" True," he replied. " I'll redeem it at once. Let me introduce 
the topic, Handel, by mentioning that in London it is not the cus- 
tom to put the knife in the mouth — for fear of accidents — and 
that while the fork is reserved for that use, it is not put further in 
than necessary. It is scarcely worth mentioning, only it's as well 
to do as otlier people do. Also, the spoon is not generally used 
over-hand, but under. Tliis has two advantages. You get at your 
mouth better (which after all is the object), and you save a good 
deal of the attitude of opening oysters, on the part of the right 
elbow." 

He offered these friendly suggestions in such a lively way, that 
we both laughed and I scarcely blushed. 

"Now," he pursued, "concerning Miss Havisham. Miss Havis- 
ham, you must know, was a spoilt child. Her mother died when 
she was a baby, and her father denied her nothing. Her father was 
a country gentleman down in your part of the world, and was a 
brewer. I don't know why it should be a crack thing to be a 
brewer ; but it is indisputable that while you cannot possibly be 
genteel and bake, you may be as genteel as never was and brew. 
You see it every day." 

"Yet a gentleman may not keep a public-house; may he?" 
said I. 

"Not on any account," returned Herbert; " but a public-house 
may keep a gentleman. Well ! Mr. Havisham was very rich and 
very proud. So was his daughter." 

"Miss Havisham was an only child?" I hazarded. 



162 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

" Stop a moment, I am coming to that. No, she was not an 
only child ; she had a half-brother. Her father privately married 
again — his cook, I rather think." 

"I thought he was proud," said I. 

" My good Handel, so he was. He married his second wife pri- 
vately, because he was proud, and in course of time she died. 
When she was dead, I apprehend he first told his daughter what 
he had done, and then the son became a part of the family, resid- 
ing in the house you are acquainted with. As the son grew a 
young man, he turned out riotous, extravagant, undutiful — alto- 
gether bad. At last his father disinherited him ; but he softened 
when he was dying, and left him well off, though not nearly so 
well off as Miss Havisham. — Take another glass of wine, and ex- 
cuse my mentioning that society as a body does not expect one to 
be so strictly conscientious in emptying one's glass, as to turn it 
bottom upwards with the rim on one's nose." 

I had been doing this, in an excess of attention to his recital. 
I thanked him, and apologised. He said, "Not at all," and 
resumed. 

" Miss Havisham was now an heiress, and you may suppose was 
looked after as a great match. Her half-brother had now ample 
means again, but what with debts and what with new madness 
wasted them most fearfully again. There were stronger differences 
between him and her, than there had been between him and his 
father, and it is suspected that he cherished a deep and mortal 
grudge against her as having influenced the father's anger. Now, 
I come to the cruel part of the story — merely breaking off, my 
dear Handel, to remark that a dinner-napkin will not go into a 
tumbler." 

Why I was trying to pack mine into my tumbler, I am wholly 
unable to say. I only know that I found myself, with a persever- 
ance worthy of a much better cause, making the most strenuous 
exertions to compress it within those limits. Again I thanked 
him and apologised, and again he said in the cheerfullest manner, 
" Not at all, I am sure ! " and resumed. 

" There appeared upon the scene — say at the races, or the pub- 
he balls, or anywhere else you like — a certain man, who made 
love to Miss Havisham. I never saw him (for this happened five- 
and-twenty years ago, before you and I were, Handel), but I have 
heard my father mention that he was a showy man, and the kind 
of man for the purpose. But that he was not to be, without igno- 
rance or prejudice, mistaken for a gentleman, my father most strongly 
asseverates ; because it is a principle of his that no man who was 
not a true gentleman at heart, ever was, since the world began, a 



GKEAT EXPECTATIONS. 153 

true gentleman in manner. He says, no varnish can hide the grain 
of the wood ; and that the more varnish you put on, the more the 
grain will express itself. Well ! This man pursued Miss Havis- 
ham closely, and professed to be devoted to her. I believe she had 
not shown much susceptibility up to that time ; but all the suscep- 
tibility she possessed, certainly came out then, and she passionately 
loved him. There is no doubt that she perfectly idolized him. He 
practised on her affection in that systematic way, that he got great 
sums of money from her, and he induced her to buy her brother out 
of a share in the brewery (which had been weakly left him by his 
father) at an immense price, on the plea that when he was her hus- 
band he must hold and manage it all. Your guardian was not at 
that time in Miss Havisham's councils, and she was too haughty 
and too much in love, to be advised by any one. Her relations 
were poor and scheming, with the exception of my father ; he was 
poor enough, but not time-serving or jealous. The only indepen- 
dent one among them, he warned her that she was doing too much 
for this man, and was placing herself too unreservedly in his power. 
She took the first opportunity of angrily ordering my father out of 
the house, in his presence, and my father has never seen her since." 

I thought of her having said, " Matthew will come and see me 
at last when I am laid dead upon that table ; " and I asked Her- 
bert whether his father was so inveterate against her ? 

" It's not that," said he, " but she charged him, in the presence 
of her intended husband, with being disappointed in the hope of 
fawning upon her for his own advancement, and, if he were to go 
to her now, it would look true — even to him — and even to her. 
To return to the man and make an end of him. The marriage day 
was fixed, the wedding dresses were bought, the wedding tour was 
planned out, the wedding guests were invited. The day came, but 
not the bridegroom. He wrote a letter " 

"Which she received," I struck in, "when she was dressing for 
her marriage 1 At twenty minutes to nine ? " 

"At the hour and minute," said Herbert, nodding, "at which 
she afterwards stopped all the clocks. What was in it, further 
than that it most heartlessly broke the marriage off, I can't tell 
you, because I don't know. When she recovered from a bad illness 
that she had, she laid the whole place waste, as you have seen it, 
and she has never since looked upon the light of day." 

" Is that all the story ? " I asked, after considering it. 

" All I know of it ; and indeed I only know so much, through 
piecing it out for myself; for my father always avoids it, and, even 
when Miss Havisham invited me to go there, told me no more of 
it than it was absolutely requisite I should understand. But I 



154 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. • 

have forgotten one thing. It has been supposed that the man to 
whom she gave her misplaced confidence, acted throughout in con- 
cert with her half-brother ; that it was a conspiracy between them ; 
and that they shared the profits." 

"I wonder he didn't marry her and get all the property," said I. 

" He may have been married already, and her cruel mortification 
may have been a part of her half-brother's scheme," said Herbert. 
" Mind ! I don't know that." 

" What became of the two men 1 " I asked, after again consider- 
ing the subject. 

" They fell into deeper shame and degradation — if there can be 
deeper — and ruin." 

" Are they alive now ? " 

" I don't know." 

" You said just now that Estella was not related to Miss Ha vis- 
ham, but adopted. When adopted ? " 

Herbert shrugged his shoulders. "There has always been an 
Estella, since I have heard of a Miss Havisham. I know no more. 
And now, Handel," said he, finally throwing off the stoiy as it 
were, " there is a perfectly open understanding between us. All 
I know about Miss Havisham, you know." 

"And all I know," I retorted, "you know." 

"I fully believe it. So there can be no competition or per- 
plexity between you and me. And as to the condition on which 
you hold your advancement in life — namely, that you are not to 
inquire or discuss to whom you owe it — you may be very sure 
that it will never be encroached upon, or even approached, by me, 
or by any one belonging to me." 

In truth, he said this with so much delicacy, that I felt the 
subject done with, even though I should be under his father's roof 
for years and years to come. Yet he said it with so much mean- 
ing, too, that I felt he as perfectly understood Miss Havisham to 
be my benefactress, as I understood the fact myself 

It had not occurred to me before, that he had led up to the 
theme for the purpose of clearing it out of our way ; but we were 
so much the lighter and easier for having broached it, that I now 
perceived this to be the case. We were very gay and sociable, 
and I asked him, in the course of conversation, what he was? 
He replied, "A capitalist — an Insurer of Ships." I suppose he 
saw me glancing about the room in search of some tokens of Ship- 
ping, or capital, for he added, " In the City." 

I had grand ideas of the wealth and importance of Insurers of 
Ships in the City, and I began to think with awe, of ha-^ang laid 
a young Insurer on his back, blackened his enterprising eye, and 




LECTURING ON CAPITAL. 



156 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

cut his responsible head open. But, again, there came upon me, 
for my relief, that odd impression that Herbert Pocket would 
never be very successful or rich. 

" I shall not rest satisfied with merely employing my capital in 
insuring ships. I shall buy up some good Life Assurance shares, 
and cut into the Direction. I shall also do a little in the mining 
way. None of these things will interfere with my chartering a 
few thousand tons on my own account. I think I shall trade," 
said he, leaning back in his chair, " to the East Indies, for silks, 
shawls, spices, dyes, drugs, and precious woods. It's an interest- 
ing trade." 

" And the profits are large ?" said I. 

" Tremendous ! " said he. 

I wavered again, and began to think here were greater expecta- 
tions than my own. 

"I think I shall trade, also," said he, putting his thumbs in his 
waistcoat pockets, " to the West Indies, for sugar, tobacco, and 
mm. Also to Ceylon, especially for elephants' tusks." 

"You will want a good many ships," said L 

"A perfect fleet," said he. 

Quite overpowered by the magnificence of these transactions, I 
asked him where the ships he insured mostly traded to at present ? 

"I haven't begun insuring yet," he replied. "I am looking 
about me." 

Somehow, that pursuit seemed more in keeping with Barnard's 
Inn. I said (in a tone of conviction), '•' Ah-h 1 " 

" Yes. I am in a counting-house, and looking about me." 

" Is a counting-house profitable ? " I asked. 

" To do you mean to the yoimg fellow who's in it ? " he 

asked, in reply. 

" Yes ; to you." 

"Why, n-no; not to me." He said this with the air of one 
carefully reckoning up and striking a balance. "Not directly 
profitable. That is, it doesn't pay me anything, and I have to 
keep myself." 

This certainly had not a profitable appearance, and I shook my 
head as if I would imply that it would be difficult to lay by much 
accumulative capital from such a source of income. 

"But the thing is," said Herbert Pocket, "that you look about 
you. That's the grand thing. You are in a counting-house, you 
know, and you look about you." 

It struck me as a singular implication that you couldn't be out 
of a counting-house, you know, and look about you ; but I silently 
deferred to his experience. 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 157 

"Then the time comes," said Herbert, "when you see your 
opening. And you go in, and you swoop upon it and you make 
your capital, and then there you are ! When you have once made 
your capital, you have nothing to do but employ it. " 

This was very like his way of conducting that encounter in 
the garden ; very like. His manner of bearing his poverty, too, 
exactly corresponded to his manner of bearing that defeat. It 
seemed to me that he took all blows and buffets now, with just 
the same air as he had taken mine then. It was evident that he 
had nothing around him but the simplest necessaries, for every- 
thing that I remarked upon turned out to have been sent in on 
my account from the coffee-house or somewhere else. 

Yet, having already made his fortune in his o\\m mind, he was 
so unassuming with it that I felt quite grateful to him for not 
being puffed up. It was a pleasant addition to his naturally 
pleasant ways, and we got on famously. In the evening we went 
out for a walk in the streets, and went half-price to the Theatre; 
and next day we went to church at Westminster Abbey, and in the 
afternoon we walked in the Parks ; and I wondered who shod aU 
the horses there, and wished Joe did. 

On a moderate computation, it was many months, that Sunday, 
since I had left Joe and Biddy. The space interposed between 
myself and them, partook of that expansion, and our marshes 
were any distance off. That I could have been at our old church 
in my old church-going clothes, on the very last Sunday that ever 
was, seemed a combination of impossibilities, geographical and 
social, solar and lunar. Yet in the London streets, so crowded 
with people and so brilliantly lighted in the dusk of evening, there 
were depressing hints of reproaches for that I had put the poor 
old kitchen at home so far away; and in the dead of night, the 
footsteps of some incapable impostor of a porter mooning about Bar- 
nard's Inn, under pretence of watching it, fell hollow on my heart. 

On the Monday morning at a quarter before nine, ' Herbert went 
to the counting-house to report himself — to look about him, too, 
I suppose — and I bore him company. He was to come away in 
an hour or two to attend me to Hammersmith, and I was to 
wait about for him. It appeared to me that the eggs from which 
young Insurers were hatched, were incubated in dust and heat, like 
the eggs of ostriches, judging from the places to which those 
incipient giants repaired on a Monday morning. Nor did the 
counting-house where Herbert assisted, show in my eyes as at all 
a good Observatory ; being a back second floor up a yard, of a 
grimy presence in all particulars, and with a look into another back 
second floor, rather than a look out. 



158 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

I waited about until it was noon, and I went upon 'Change, 
and I saw fluey men sitting there under the bills about shipping, 
whom I took to be great merchants, though I couldn't understand 
why they should all be out of spirits. When Herbert came, we 
went and had lunch at a celebrated house which I then quite 
venerated, but now believe to have been the most abject supersti- 
tion in Europe, and where I could not help noticing, even then, 
that there was much more gravy on the table-cloths and knives 
and waiters' clothes, than in the steaks. This collation disposed 
of at a moderate price (considering the grease, which was not 
charged for), we went back to Barnard's Inn and got my little 
portmanteau, and then took coach for Hammersmith. We arrived 
there at two or three o'clock in the afternoon, and had very little 
way to walk to Mr. Pocket's house. Lifting the latch of a gate, 
we passed direct into a little garden overlooking the river, where 
Mr. Pocket's children were playing about. And, unless I deceive 
myself on a point where my interests or prepossessions are certainly 
not concerned, I saw that Mr. and Mrs. Pocket's children were not 
growing up or being brought up, but were tumbling up. 

Mrs. Pocket was sitting on a garden chair under a tree, reading, 
with her legs upon another garden chair ; and Mrs. Pocket's two 
nursemaids were looking about them while the children played. 
"Mama," said Herbert, "this is young Mr. Pip." Upon which 
Mrs. Pocket received me with an appearance of amiable dignity. 

"Master Alick and Miss Jane," cried one of the nurses to two 
of the children, "if you go a bouncing up against them bushes 
you'll fall over into the river and be drownded, and what'll your 
pa say then ? " 

At the same time this nurse picked up Mrs. Pocket's handker- 
chief, and said, " If that don't make six times you've dropped it. 
Mum ! " Upon which Mrs. Pocket laughed and said, " Thank you, 
Flopson," and settling herself in one chair only, resumed her book. 
Her countenance immediately assumed a knitted and intent expres- 
sion as if she had been reading for a week, but before she could 
have read half a dozen lines, she fixed her eyes upon me, and said, 
"I hope your mama is quite well?" This unexpected inquiry 
put me into such a difficulty that I began saying in the absurdest 
way that if there had been any such person I had no doubt she 
would have been quite well and would have been veiy much obliged 
and would have sent her compliments, when the nurse came to my 
rescue. 

" Well ! " she cried, picking up the pocket-handkerchief, " if 
that don't make seven times ! What are you a doing of this 
afternoon, Mum ! " Mrs. Pocket received her property, at first 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 159 

with a look of unutterable surprise as if she had never seen it 
before, and then Avith a laugh of recognition, and said, "Thank 
you, Flopson," and forgot me, and went on reading. 

I found, now I had leisure to count them, that there were no 
fewer than six little Pockets present, in various stages of tumbling 
up. I had scarcely arrived at the total when a seventh was heard, 
as in the region of air, wailing dolefully. 

" If there ain't Baby ! " said Flopson, appearing to think it most 
surprising. " Make haste up, Millers ! " 

Millers, who was the other nurse, retired into the house, and 
by degrees the child's wailing was hushed and stopped, as if it 
were a young ventriloquist with something in its mouth. Mrs. 
Pocket read all the time, and I was curious to know what the book 
could be. 

We were waiting, I suppose, for Mr. Pocket to come out to us ; 
at any rate we waited there, and so I had an opportunity of observ- 
ing the remarkable family phenomenon that whenever any of the 
children strayed near Mrs. Pocket in their play, they always tripped 
themselves up and tumbled over her — always very much to her 
momentary astonishment, and their own more enduring lamentation. 
I was at a loss to account for this surprising circumstance, and 
coidd not help giving my mind to speculations about it, until by- 
and-bye Millers came down with the baby, which Baby was handed 
to Flopson, which Flopson was handing it to Mrs. Pocket, when 
she too went fairly head foremost over Mrs, Pocket, baby and all, 
and was caught by Herbert and myself. 

" Gracious me, Flopson ! " said Mrs. Pocket, looking off her 
book for a moment, " everybody's tumbling ! " 

" Gracious you, indeed. Mum ! " returned Flopson, very red in 
the face ; " what have you got there ? " 

"/got here, Flopson?" asked Mrs. Pocket. 

" Why, if it ain't your footstool ! " cried Flopson. " And if you 
keep it under your skirts like that, who's to help tumbling? 
Here ! Take the baby, Mum, and give me your book." 

Mrs. Pocket acted on the advice, and inexpertly danced the 
infant a little in her lap, while the other children played about it. 
This had lasted but a very short time, when Mrs. Pocket issued 
summary orders that they were all to be taken into the house for 
a nap. Thus I made the second discovery on that first occasion, 
that the nurture of the little Pockets consisted of alternately tum- 
bling up and lying down. 

Under these circumstances, when Flopson and Millers had got 
the children into the house, like a little flock of sheep, and Mr. 
Pocket came out of it to make my acquaintance, I was not much 



160 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

surprised to find that Mr. Pocket was a gentleman with a rather 
perplexed expression of face, and with his veiy grey hair disordered 
on his head, as if he didn't quite see his way to putting anything 
straight. 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

Mr. Pocket said he was glad to see me, and he hoped I 
was not sorry to see him. " For, I really am not," he added, 
with his son's smile, "an alarming personage." He was a 
young-looking man, in spite of his perplexities and his very 
grey hair, and his manner seemed quite natural. I use the 
wbrd natural, in the sense of its being unafi"ected; there was 
something comic in his distraught way, as though it would have 
been downright ludicrous but for his own perception that it was 
very near being so. When he had talked with me a little, he said 
to Mrs. Pocket, with a rather anxious contraction of his eyebrows, 
which were black and handsome, " Belinda, I hope you have wel- 
comed Mr. Pip 1 " And she looked up from her book, and said, 
"Yes." She then smiled upon me in an absent state of mind, 
and asked me if I liked the taste of orange-flower water 1 As the 
question had no bearing, near or remote, on any foregone or subse- 
quent transactions, I considered it to have been thrown out, like 
her previous approaches, in general conversational condescension. 

I found out within a few hours, and may mention at once, that 
Mrs. Pocket was the only daughter of a certain quite accidental 
deceased Knight, who had invented for himself a conviction that 
his deceased father would have been made a Baronet but for some- 
body's determined opposition arising out of entirely personal mo- 
tives — I forget whose, if I ever knew — the Sovereign's, the Prime 
Minister's, the Lord Chancellor's, the Archbishop of Canterbury's, 
anybody's — and had tacked himself on to the nobles of the earth 
in right of this quite supposititious fact. I beheve he had been 
knighted himself for storming the English grammar at the point of 
the pen, in a desperate address engrossed on vellum, on the occasion 
of the laying of the first stone of some building or other, and for 
handing some Royal Personage either the trowel or the mortar. 
Be that as it may, he had directed Mrs. Pocket to be brought up 
from her cradle as one who in the nature of things must marry a 
title, and who was to be guarded from the acquisition of plebeian 
domestic knowledge. 

So successful a watch and ward had been established over the 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 161 

young lady by this judicious parent, that she had grown up highly 
ornamental, but perfectly helpless and useless. With her char- 
acter thus happily formed, in the first bloom of her youth she had 
encountered Mr. Pocket : who was also in the first bloom of youth, 
and not quite decided whether to mount to the Woolsack, or to 
roof himself in with a mitre. As his doing the one or the other was 
a mere question of time, he and Mrs. Pocket had taken Time by the 
forelock (when, to judge from its length, it would seem to have 
wanted cutting), and had married without the knowledge of the 
judicious parent. The judicious parent, having nothing to bestow 
or withhold but his blessing, had handsomely settled that dower 
upon them after a short struggle, and had informed Mr. Pocket 
that his wife was "a treasure for a Prince." Mr. Pocket had 
invested the Prince's treasure in the ways of the world ever since, 
and it was supposed to have brought him in but indiff'erent interest. 
Still, Mrs. Pocket was in general the object of a queer sort of 
respectful pity, because she had not married a title ; while Mr. 
Pocket was the object of a queer sort of forgiving reproach, because 
he had never got one. 

Mr. Pocket took me into the house and showed me my room ; 
which was a pleasant one, and so furnished as that I could use it 
with comfort for my own private sitting-room. He then knocked 
at the doors of two other similar rooms, and introduced me to their 
occupants, by name Drummle and Startop. Drummle, an old-look- 
ing young man of a heavy order of architecture, was whistUng. 
Startop, younger in years and appearance, was reading and holding 
his head, as if he thought himself in danger of exploding it with 
too strong a charge of knowledge. 

Both Mr. and Mrs. Pocket had such a noticeable air of being in 
somebody else's hands, that I wondered who really was in possession 
of the house and let them live there, until I found this unknown 
power to be the servants. It was a smooth way of going on, perhaps, 
in respect of saving trouble ; but it had the appearance of being ex- 
pensive, for the servants felt it a duty they owed to themselves to be 
nice in their eating and drinking, and to keep a deal of company 
downstairs. They allowed a very liberal table to Mr. and Mrs. 
Pocket, yet it always appeared to me that by far the best part of the 
house to have boarded in, would have been the kitchen — always 
supposing the boarder capable of self-defence, for, before I had been 
there a week, a neighbouring lady with whom the family were 
personally unacquainted, wrote in to say that she had seen Millers 
slapping the baby. This greatly distressed Mrs. Pocket, who burst 
into tears on receiving the note, and said that it was an extraordinary 
thing that the neighbours couldn't mind their own business. 



162 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

By degrees I learnt, and chiefly from Herbert, that Mr. Pocket 
had been educated at Harrow and at Cambridge, where he had 
distinguished himself ; but that when he had had the happiness of 
marrying Mrs. Pocket very early in life, he had impaired his pros- 
pects and taken up the calling of a Grinder. After grinding a number 
of dull blades — of whom it was remarkable that their fathers, 
when influential, were always going to help him to preferment, 
but always forgot to do it when the blades had left the Grindstone 
— he had wearied of that poor work and had come to London. 
Here, after gradually failing in loftier hopes, he had "read" with 
divers who had lacked opportunities or neglected them, and had 
refurbished divers others for special occasions, and had turned his 
acquirements to the account of literary compilation and correction, 
and on such means, added to some very moderate private resources, 
still maintained the house I saw. 

Mr. and Mrs. Pocket had a toady neighbour; a widow lady of 
that highly sympathetic nature that she agreed with everybody, 
blessed everybody, and shed smiles and tears on everybody, accord- 
ing to circumstances. This lady's name was Mrs. Coiler, and I had 
the honour of taking her down to dinner on the day of my installa- 
tion. She gave me to understand on the stairs, that it was a blow 
to dear Mrs. Pocket that dear Mr. Pocket should be under the 
necessity of receiving gentlemen to read with him. That did not 
extend to me, she told me in a gush of love and confidence (at that 
time, I had known her something less than five minutes) ; if they 
were all like Me, it would be quite another thing. 

"But dear Mrs. Pocket," said Mrs. Coiler, "after her early 
disappointment (not that dear Mr. Pocket was to blame in that), 
requires so much luxury and elegance " 

" Yes, ma'am," I said, to stop her, for I was afraid she was going 
to cry. 

" And she is of so aristocratic a disposition " 

" Yes, ma'am," I said again, with the same object as before. 

" — that it is hard," said Mrs. Coiler, "to have dear Mr. 
Pocket's time and attention diverted from dear Mrs. Pocket." 

I could not help thinking that it might be harder if the butcher's 
time and attention were diverted from dear Mrs. Pocket; but I 
said nothing, and indeed had enough to do in keeping a bashful 
watch upon my company-manners. 

It came to my knowledge, through what passed between Mrs. 
Pocket and Drummle, while I was attentive to my knife and fork, 
spoon, glasses, and other instruments of self-destruction, that 
Drummle, whose Christian name was Bentley, was actually the next 
heir but one to a baronetcy. It further appeared that the book I 



I 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 163 

had seen Mrs. Pocket reading in the garden, was all about titles, and 
that she knew the exact date at which her grandpapa would have 
come into the book, if he ever had come at all. Drummle didn't say- 
much, but in his limited way (he struck me as a sulky kind of fellow) 
he spoke as one of the elect, and recognised Mrs. Pocket as a woman 
and a sister. No one but themselves and Mrs. Coder the toady 
neighbour showed any interest in this part of the conversation, 
and it appeared to me that it was painful to Herbert; but it 
promised to last a long time, when the page came in with the 
announcement of a domestic affliction. It was, in effect, that the 
cook had mislaid the beef. To my unutterable amazement, I now, 
for the first time, saw Mr. Pocket relieve his mind by going through 
a performance that struck me as very extraordinary, but which made 
no impression on anybody else, and with which I soon became as 
familiar as the rest. He laid down the carving-knife and fork — 
being engaged in carving at the moment — put his two hands into 
his disturbed hair, and appeared to make an extraordinary effort to 
lift himself up by it. When he had done this, and had not lifted 
himself up at all, he quietly went on with what he was about. 

Mrs. Coder then changed the subject and began to flatter me. 
I liked it for a few moments, but she flattered me so very grossly 
that the pleasure was soon over. She had a serpentine way of com- 
ing close at me when she pretended to be vitally interested in the 
friends and localities I had left, which was altogether snaky and 
fork-tongued ; and when she made an occasional bounce upon Star- 
top (who said very little to her), or upon Drummle (who said less), 
I rather envied them for being on the opposite side of the table. 

After dinner the children were introduced, and Mrs. Coder made 
admiring comments on their eyes, noses, and legs — a sagacious way 
of improving their minds. There were four little girls, and two 
little boys, besides the baby who might have been either, and the 
baby's next successor who was as yet neither. They were brought 
in by Flopson and Millers, much as though those two non-commis- 
sioned ofiicers had been recmiting somewhere for children and had 
enlisted these : while Mrs. Pocket looked at the young Nobles that 
ought to have been, as if she rather thought she had had the pleas- 
ure of inspecting them before, but didn't quite know what to make 
of them. 

" Here ! Give me your fork. Mum, and take the baby," said 
Flopson. " Don't take it that way, or you'll get its head under the 
table." 

Thus advised, Mrs. Pocket took it the other way, and got its 
head upon the table ; which was announced to all present by a 
prodigious concussion. 



164 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

"Dear, dear! give it me back, Mum," said Flopson; "and 
Miss Jane, come and dance the baby, do ! " 

One of the little girls, a mere mite who seemed to have prema- 
turely taken upon herself some charge of the others, stepped out 
of her place by me, and danced to and from the baby until it left 
off crying, and laughed. Then all the children laughed, and Mr. 
Pocket (who in the meantime had twice endeavoured to lift him- 
self up by the hair) laughed, and we all laughed and were glad. 

Flopson, by dint of doubling the baby at the joints like a Dutch 
doll, then got it safely into Mrs. Pocket's lap, and gave it the nut- 
crackers to play with : at the same time recommending Mrs. Pocket 
to take notice that the handles of that instrument were not likely 
to agree with its eyes, and sharply charging Miss Jane to look after 
the same. Then, the two nurses left the room, and had a lively 
scuffle on the staircase with a dissipated page who had waited at 
dinner, and who had clearly lost half his buttons at the gaming- 
table. 

I was made very uneasy in my mind by Mrs. Pocket's falling 
into a discussion with Drummle respecting two baronetcies while 
she ate a sliced orange steeped in sugar and wine, and forgetting 
all about the baby on her lap : who did most appalling things with 
the nutcrackers. At length little Jane perceived its young brains 
to be imperilled, softly left her place, and with many small artifices 
coaxed the dangerous weapon away. Mrs. Pocket finishing her 
orange at about the same time, and not approving of this, said 
to Jane : 

"You naughty child, how dare you? Go and sit down this 
instant ! " 

"Mama, dear," lisped the little girl, "baby ood have put hith 
eyeth out." 

" How dare you tell me so ! " retorted Mrs. Pocket. " Go and 
sit down in your chair this moment ! " 

Mrs. Pocket's dignity was so crushing, that I felt quite abashed : 
as if I myself had done something to rouse it. 

"Belinda," remonstrated Mr. Pocket, from the other end of the 
table, "how can you be so unreasonable? Jane only interfered 
for the protection of baby." 

"I will not allow anybody to interfere," said Mrs. Pocket. "I 
am surprised, Matthew, that you should expose me to the affront 
of interference." 

" Good God ! " cried Mr. Pocket, in an outbreak of desolate des- 
peration. "Are infants to be nutcrackered into their tombs, andj 
is nobody to save them 1 " 

"I will not be interfered with by Jane," said Mrs. Pocket, with 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 165 

a majestic glance at that innocent little offender. " I hope I know 
my poor grandpapa's position. Jane, indeed ! " 

Mr. Pocket got his hands in his hair again, and this time really 
did lift himself some inches out of his chair. " Hear this ! " he 
helplessly exclaimed to the elements. "Babies are to be nut- 
crackered dead, for people's poor grandpapa's positions ! " Then 
he let himself down again, and became silent. 

We all looked awkwardly at the table-cloth while this was going 
on. A pause succeeded, during which the honest and irrepressible 
baby made a series of leaps and crows at little Jane, who appeared 
to me to be the only member of the family (irrespective of the ser- 
vants) with whom it had any decided acquaintance. 

"Mr. Drummle," said Mrs. Pocket, "will you ring for Flopson? 
Jane, you undutiful little thing, go and lie down. Now, baby dar- 
ling, come with ma ! " 

The baby was the soul of honour, and protested with all its 
might. It doubled itself up the wrong way over Mrs. Pocket's 
arm, exhibited a pair of knitted shoes and dimpled ankles to the 
company in lieu of its soft face, and was carried out in the highest 
state of mutiny. And it gained its point after all, for I saw it 
through the window within a few minutes, being nursed by little 
Jane. 

It happened that the other five children were left behind at the 
dinner-table, through Flopson's having some private engagement, 
and their not being anybody else's business. I thus became aware 
of the mutual relations between them and Mr. Pocket, which were 
exemplified in the following manner. Mr. Pocket, with the normal 
perplexity of his face heightened, and his hair rumpled, looked at 
them for some minutes, as if he couldn't make out how they came 
to be boarding and lodging in that establishment, and why they 
hadn't been billeted by Nature on somebody else. Then, in a dis- 
tant. Missionary way he asked them certain questions — -as why 
little Joe had that hole in his frill : who said. Pa, Flopson was 
going to mend it when she had time — and how little Fanny came 
by that whitlow : who said. Pa, Millers was going to poultice it 
when she didn't forget. Then he melted into parental tenderness, 
and gave them a shilling apiece and told them to go and play ; and 
then as they went out, with one very strong eff'ort to lift himself 
up by the hair he dismissed the hopeless subject. 

In the evening there was rowing on the river. As Drummle 
and Startop had each a boat, I resolved to set up mine, and to cut 
them both out. I was pretty good at most exercises in which 
country-boys are adepts, but, as I was conscious of wanting elegance 
of style for the Thames — not to say for other waters — I at once 



166 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

engaged to place myself under the tuition of the winner of a prize- 
wheny who plied at our stairs, and to whom I was introduced by 
my new allies. This practical authority confused me very much, 
by saying I had the arm of a blacksmith. If he could have known 
how nearly the compliment had lost him his pupil, I doubt if he 
would have paid it. 

There was a supper-tray after we got home at night, and I think 
we should all have enjoyed ourselves, but for a rather disagreeable 
domestic occurrence. Mr. Pocket was in good spirits, when a 
housemaid came in, and said, " If you please, sir, I should wish to 
speak to you." 

"Speak to your master?" said Mrs. Pocket, whose dignity was 
roused again. "How can you think of such a thing? Go and 
speak to Flopson. Or speak to me — ^at some other time." 

" Begging your pardon, ma'am," returned the housemaid, " I 
should wish to speak at once, and to speak to master." 

Hereupon Mr. Pocket went out of the room, and we made the 
best of ourselves until he came back. 

" This is a pretty thing, Belinda ! " said Mr. Pocket, returning 
with a countenance expressive of grief and despair. " Here's the 
cook lying insensibly drunk on the kitchen floor, with a large bun- 
dle of fresh butter made up in the cupboard ready to sell for 
grease ! " 

Mrs. Pocket instantly showed much amiable emotion, and said, 
" This is that odious Sophia's doing ! " 

" What do you mean, Belinda 1 " demanded Mr. Pocket. 

"Sophia has told you," said Mrs. Pocket. "Did I not see her, 
with my own eyes, and hear her with my own ears, come into the 
room just now and ask to speak to you ? " 

"But has she not taken me downstairs, Belinda," returned Mr. 
Pocket, "and shown me the woman, and the bundle too?" 

"And do you defend her, Matthew," said Mrs. Pocket, "for 
making mischief?" 

Mr. Pocket uttered a dismal groan. 

"Am I, grandpapa's granddaughter, to be nothing in the house ? " 
said Mrs. Pocket. " Besides, the cook has always been a very nice 
respectful woman, and said in the most natural manner when she 
came to look after the situation, that she felt I was born to be a 
Duchess." 

There was a sofa where Mr. Pocket stood, and he dropped upon 
it in the attitude of a Dying Gladiator. Still in that attitude he 
said, with a hollow voice, "Good night, Mr. Pip," when I deemed 
it advisable to go to bed and leave him. 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 167 



CHAPTER XXIV. 

After two or three days, when I had established myself in my 
room and had gone backwards and forwards to London several 
times, and had ordered all I wanted of my tradesmen, Mr. Pocket 
and I had a long talk together. He knew more of my intended 
career than I knew myself, for he referred to his having been told 
by Mr. Jaggers that I was not designed for any profession, and 
that I should be well enough educated for my destiny if I could 
"hold my own" Avith the average of young men in prosperous 
circumstances. I acquiesced, of course, knowing nothing to the 
contrary. 

He advised my attending certain places in London, for the 
acquisition of such mere rudiments as I wanted, and my investing 
him with the functions of explainer and director of all my studies. 
He hoped that with intelligent assistance I should meet with little 
to discourage me, and should soon be able to dispense with any aid 
but his. Through his way of saying this, and much more to sim- 
ilar purpose, he placed himself on confidential terms with me in an 
admirable manner : and I may state at once that he was always so 
zealous and honourable in fulfilling his compact with me, that he 
made me zealous and honourable in fulfilling mine with him. If 
he had shown indiff'erence as a master, I have no doubt I should 
have returned the compliment as a pupil; he gave me no such 
excuse, and each of us did the other justice. Nor, did I ever 
regard him as having anything ludicrous about him — or anything 
but what was serious, honest, and good — in his tutor communica- 
tion with me. 

When these points were settled, and so far carried out as that I 
had begun to work in earnest, it occurred to me that if I could 
retain my bedroom in Barnard's Inn, my life would be agreeably 
varied, while my manners would be none the worse for Herbert's 
society. Mr. Pocket did not object to this arrangement, but urged 
that before any step could possibly be taken in it, it must be sub- 
mitted to my guardian. I felt that his delicacy arose out of the 
consideration that the plan would save Herbert some expense, so I 
went off to Little Britain and imparted my wish to Mr. Jaggers. 

"If I could buy the furniture now hired for me," said I, "and 
one or two other little things, I should be quite at home there." 

"Go it!" said Mr. Jaggers, with a short laugh. "I told you 
you'd get on. Well ! How much do you want ? " 

I said I didn't know how much. 

" Come ! " retorted Mr. Jaggers. " How much ? Fifty pounds ? " 



168 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

" Oh, not nearly so much." 

" Five pounds ? " said Mr. Jaggers. 

This was such a great fall, that I said in discomfiture, "Oh! 
more than that." 

"More than that, eh!" retorted Mr. Jaggers, lying in wait for 
me, with his hands in his pockets, his head on one side, and his 
eyes on the wall behind me; " how much more ? " 

"It is so difficult to fix a sum," said I, hesitating. 

"Come!" said Mr. Jaggers. "Let's get at it. Twice five; 
will that do 1 Three times five ; will that do 1 Four times five ; 
will that do ? " 

I said I thought that would do handsomely. 

" Four times five will do handsomely, will it 1 " said Mr. Jaggers, 
knitting his brows. " Now, what do you make of four times five?" 

"What do I make of it!" 

" Ah ! " said Mr. Jaggers ; " how much ? " 

"I suppose you make it twenty pounds," said I, smiling. 

" Never mind what /make it, my friend," observed Mr. Jaggers, 
with a knowing and contradictory toss of the head. " I want to 
know what t/ou make it 1 " 

" Twenty pounds, of course." 

" Wemmick ! " said Mr. Jaggers, opening his office door. " Take 
Mr. Pip's written order, and pay him twenty pounds." 

This strongly marked way of doing business made a strongly 
marked impression on me, and that not of an agreeable kind. Mr. 
Jaggers never laughed ; but he wore great bright creaking boots ; 
and, in poising himself on those boots, with his large head bent 
down and his eyebrows joined together, awaiting an answer, he 
sometimes caused the boots to creak, as if the^ laughed in a dry 
and suspicious way. As he happened to go out now, and as Wem- 
mick was brisk and talkative, I said to Wemmick that I hardly 
knew what to make of Mr. Jaggers's manner. 

" Tell him that, and he'll take it as a compliment," answered 
Wemmick; "he don't mean that you should know what to make 
of it. — Oh !" for I looked surprised, "it's not personal; it's pro- 
fessional : only professional." 

Wemmick was at his desk, lunching — and crunching — on a 
dry hard biscuit ; pieces of which he threw from time to time into 
his slit of a mouth, as if he were posting them. 

""Always seems to me," said Wemmick, " as if he had set a man- 
trap and was watching it. Suddenly — click — you're caught ! " 

Without remarking that man-traps were not among the amenities 
of life, I said I supposed he was very skilful 1 

" Deep," said Wemmick, " as Australia." Pointing with his pei 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 169 

at the office floor, to express that Australia was understood, for 
the purposes of the figure, to be symmetrically on the opposite 
spot of the globe. "If there was anything deeper," added Wem- 
mick, bringing his pen to paper, " he'd be it." 

Then, I said I supposed he had a fine business, and Wemmick 
said, " Ca-pi-tal ! " Then I asked if there were many clerks 1 to 
which he replied : 

"We don't run much into clerks, because there's only one 
Jaggers, and people won't have him at second-hand. There are 
only four of us. Would you like to see 'em ? You are one of us, 
as I may say." 

I accepted the offer. When Mr. Wemmick had put all the 
biscuit into the post, and had paid me my money from a cash-box 
in a safe, the key of which safe he kept somewhere down his back, 
and produced from his coat-collar like an iron pigtail, we went up- 
stairs. The house Avas dark and shabby, and the greasy shoulders 
that had left their mark in Mr. Jaggers's room seemed to have been 
shuffling up and down the staircase for years. In the front first 
floor, a clerk who looked something between a publican and a rat- 
catcher — a large pale puffed swollen man — was attentively en- 
gaged with three or four people of shabby appearance, whom he 
treated as unceremoniously as everybody seemed to be treated who 
contributed to Mr. Jaggers's coffers. " Getting evidence together," 
said Mr. Wemmick, as we came out, "for the Bailey." In the 
room over that, a little flabby terrier of a clerk with dangling hair 
(his cropping seemed to have been forgotten when he was a puppy) 
was similarly engaged with a man with weak eyes, whom Mr. 
Wemmick presented to me as a smelter who kept his pot always 
boiling, and who would melt me anything I pleased — and who 
was in an excessive white-perspiration, as if he had been trying his 
art on himself In a back room, a high-shouldered man with a 
face-ache tied up in dirty flannel, who was dressed in old black 
clothes that bore the appearance of having been waxed, was stoop- 
ing over his work of making fair copies of the notes of the other 
two gentlemen, for Mr. Jaggers's own use. 

This was all the establishment. When we went downstairs again, 
Wemmick led me into my guardian's room, and said, " This you've 
seen already." 

"Pray," said I, as the two odious casts with the twitchy leer 
upon them caught my sight again, "whose likenesses are those?" 

" These ? " said Wemmick, getting upon a chair, and blowing the 
dust off the horrible heads before bringing them down. " These 
are two celebrated ones. Famous clients of ours that got us a 
world of credit. This chap (why you must have come down in 



170 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

the night and been peeping into the inkstand, to get this blot 
upon your eyebrow, you old rascal ! ) murdered his master, and, 
considering that he wasn't brought up to evidence, didn't plan it 
badly." 

" Is it like him ? " I asked, recoiling from the brute, as Wemmick 
spat upon his eyebrow, and gave it a rub with his sleeve. 

" Like him 1 It's himself, you know. The cast was made in 
Newgate, directly after he was taken down. You had a particular 
fancy for me, hadn't you. Old Artful ? " said Wemmick. He then 
explained this affectionate apostrophe, by touching his brooch 
representing the lady and the weeping willow at the tomb with 
the urn upon it, and said, " Had it made for me express ! " 

" Is the lady anybody ? " said I. 

"No," returned Wemmick. "Only his game. (You liked 
your bit of game, didn't you?) No; deuce a bit of a lady in the 
case, Mr. Pip, except one — and she wasn't of this slender ladylike 
sort, and you wouldn't have caught her looking after this urn — 
unless there was something to drink in it." Wemmick's attention 
being thus directed to his brooch, he put down the cast, and 
polished the brooch with his pocket-handkerchief. 

" Did that other creature come to the same end ? " I asked. 
" He has the same look." 

" You're right," said Wemmick ; " it's the genuine look. Much 
as if one nostril was caught up with a horsehair and a little fish- 
hook. Yes, he came to the same end ; quite the natural end here, 
I assure you. He forged wills, this blade did, if he didn't also 
put the supposed testators to sleep too. You were a gentlemanly 
Cove, though" (Mr. Wemmick was again apostrophising), "and 
you said you could write Greek. Yah, Bounceable ! What a liar 
you were ! I never met such a liar as you ! " Before putting his 
late friend on his shelf again, Wemmick touched the largest of his 
mourning rings, and said, " Sent out to buy it for me, only the 
day before." 

While he was putting up the other cast and coming down from 
the chair, the thought crossed my mind that all his personal jewel- 
lery was derived from like sources. As he had shown no dif&dence 
on the subject, I ventured on the liberty of asking him the ques- 
tion, when he stood before me, dusting his hands. 

" Oh yes," he returned, "these are all gifts of that kind. One 
brings another, you see; that's the way of it. I always take 'em.i 
They're curiosities. And they're property. They may not be] 
worth much, but, after all, they're property and portable. It don't] 
signify to you with your brilliant look-out, but as to myself, myj 
guiding-star always is. Get hold of portable property." 



GKEAT EXPECTATIONS. 171 

When I had rendered homage to this light, he went on to say- 
in a friendly manner : 

"If at any odd time when you have nothing better to do, you 
wouldn't mind coming over to see me at Walworth, I could offer 
you a bed, and I should consider it an honour. I have not much 
to show you ; but such two or three curiosities as I' have got, 
you might like to look over; and I am fond of a bit of garden 
and a summer-house." 

I said I should be delighted to accept his hospitality. 

"Thankee," said he: "then we'll consider that it's to come 
off, when convenient to you. Have you dined with Mr. Jaggers 

yet?" 

" Not yet." 

"Well," said Wemmick, "he'll give you wine, and good wine. 
I'U give you punch, and not bad punch. And now I'll tell you 
something. When you go to dine with Mr. Jaggers, look at his 
housekeeper." 

"Shall I see something very uncommon?" 

"Well," said Wemmick, "you'll see a wild beast tamed. Not 
so very uncommon, you'll tell me. I reply, that depends on the 
original wildness of the beast, and the amount of taming. It 
won't lower your opinion of Mr. Jaggers's powers. Keep your 
eye on it." 

I told him I would do so, with all the interest and curiosity 
that his preparation awakened. As I was taking my departure, 
he asked me if I would like to devote five minutes to seeing Mr. 
Jaggers "at it?" 

For several reasons, and not least because I didn't clearly know 
what Mr. Jaggers would be found to be " at," I replied in the affirma- 
tive. We dived into the City, and came up in a crowded police- 
court, where a blood-relation (in the murderous sense) of the 
deceased with the fanciful taste in brooches, was standing at the 
bar, uncomfortably chewing something ; while my guardian had a 
woman under examination or cross-examination — I don't know 
which — and was striking her, and the bench, and everybody with 
awe. If anybody, of whatsoever degree, said a word that he didn't 
approve of, he instantly required to have it " taken down." If 
anybody wouldn't make an admission, he said, " I'll have it out of 
you ! " and if anybody made an admission, he said, " Now I have 
got you ! " The magistrates shivered under a single bite of his 
finger. Thieves and thieftakers hung in dread rapture on his 
words, and shrank when a hair of his eyebrows turned in their 
direction. Which side he was on, I couldn't make out, for he 
seemed to me to be grinding the whole place in a miU ; I only 



172 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

know that when I stole out on tiptoe, he was not on the side of 
the bench ; for, he was making the legs of the old gentleman who 
presided, quite convulsive under the table, by his denunciations of 
his conduct as the representative of British law and justice in 
that chair that day. 



CHAPTER XXV. 

Bentley Drummle, who was so sulky a fellow that he even took 
up a book as if its writer had done him an injury, did not take up 
an acquaintance in a more agreeable spirit. Heavy in figure, move- 
ment, and comprehension — in the sluggish complexion of his face, 
and in the large awkward tongue that seemed to loll about in his 
mouth as he himself lolled about in a room — he was idle, proud, 
niggardly, reserved, and suspicious. He came of rich people do^vn 
in Somersetshire, who had nursed this combination of qualities 
until they made the discovery that it was just of age and a block- 
head. Thus, Bentley Drummle had come to Mr. Pocket when he 
was a head taller than that gentleman, and half a dozen heads 
thicker than most gentlemen. 

Startop had been spoiled by a weak mother, and kept at home 
when he ought to have been at school, but he was devotedly 
attached to her, and admired her beyond measure. He had a 
woman's delicacy of feature, and was — "as you may see, though 
you never saw her," said Herbert to me — "exactly like his 
mother." It was but natural that I should take to him much 
more kindly than to Drummle, and that, even in the earliest even- 
ings of our boating, he and I should pull homeward abreast of 
one another, conversing from boat to boat, while Bentley Drummle 
came up in our wake alone, under the overhanging banks and 
among the rushes. He would always creep in-shore like some 
uncomfortable amphibious creature, even when the tide would have 
sent him fast upon his way ; and I always think of him as coming 
after us in the dark or by the back-water, when our own two boats 
were breaking the sunset or the moonlight in mid-stream. 

Herbert was my intimate companion and friend. I presented 
him with a half-share in my boat, which was the occasion of his 
often coming down to Hammersmith ; and my possession of a half- 
share in his chambers often took me up to London. We used to 
walk between the two places at all hours. I have an affection for 
the road yet (though it is not so pleasant a road as it was then), 
formed in the impressibility of untried youth and hope. 

When I had been in Mr. Pocket's family a month or two, Mr 






GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 173 

and Mrs. Camilla turned up. Camilla was Mr. Pocket's sister. 
G'eorgiana, whom I had seen at Miss Havisham's on the same occa- 
sion, also turned up. She was a cousin — an indigestive single 
woman, who called her rigidity religion, and her liver love. These 
people hated me with the hatred of cupidity and disappointment. 
As a matter of course, they fawned upon me in my prosperity mth 
the basest meanness. Towards Mr. Pocket, as a grown-up infant 
with no notion of his own interests, they showed the complacent 
forbearance I had heard them express. Mrs. Pocket they held in 
contempt ; but they allowed the poor soul to have been heavily 
disappointed in life, because that shed a feeble reflected light upon 
themselves. 

These were the surroundings among which I settled down, and 
applied myself to my education, I soon contracted expensive 
habits, and began to spend an amount of money that within a few 
short months I should have thought almost fabulous ; but through 
good and evil I stuck to my books. There was no other merit in 
this, than my having sense enough to feel my deficiencies. Between 
Mr. Pocket and Herbert I got on fast ; and, with one or the other 
always at my elbow to give me the start I wanted, and clear obstruc- 
tions out of my road, I must have been as great a dolt as Drummle 
if I had done less. 

I had not seen Mr. Wemmick for some weeks, when I thought 
I would write him a note and propose to go home with him on a 
certain evening. He replied that it would give him much pleasure, 
and that he would expect me at the office at six o'clock. Thither 
I went, and there I found him, putting the key of his safe down 
his back as the clock struck. 

"Did you think of walking down to Walworth?" said he. 

"Certainly," said I, "if you approve." 

"Very much," was Wemmick's reply, "for I have had my legs 
under the desk all day, and shall be glad to stretch them. Now 
I'll tell you what I've got for supper, Mr. Pip. I have got a stewed 
steak — which is of home preparation — and a cold roast fowl — 
which is from the cook's-shop. I think it's tender, because the 
master of the shop was a Juryman in some cases of ours the other 
day, and we let him down easy. I reminded him of it when I 
bought the fowl, and I said, ' Pick us out a good one, old Briton, 
because if we had chosen to keep you in the box another day or 
two, we could have done it.' He said to that, ' Let me make you 
a present of the best fowl in the shop.' I let him of course. As 
far as it goes, it's property and portable. You don't object to an 
aged parent, I hope 1 " 

I really thought he was still speaking of the fowl, until he added, 



174 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

"Because I have got an aged parent at my place." I then said 
what politeness requu-ed. 

"So you haven't dined with Mr. Jaggers yet?" he pursued, as 
we walked along. 

" Not yet." 

" He told me so this afternoon when he heard you were coming. 
I expect you'll have an invitation to-morrow. He's going to ask 
your pals, too. Three of 'em ; ain't there ? " 

Although I was not in the habit of counting Drummle as one of 
my intimate associates, I answered, " Yes." 

"Well, he's going to ask the whole gang;" I hardly felt com- 
plimented by the word; "and whatever he gives you, he'll give 
you good. Don't look forward to variety, but you'll have excel- 
lence. And there's another rum thing in his house," proceeded 
Wemmick after a moment's pause, as if the remark followed on the 
housekeeper understood ; " he never lets a door or window be fas- 
tened at night." 

"Is he never robbed? " 

" That's it ! " returned Wemmick. " He says, and gives it out 
publicly, ' I want to see the man who'll rob ??ie.' Lord bless you, 
I have heard him, a hundred times if I have heard once, say to 
regular cracksmen in our front office, ' You know where I live ; 
now no bolt is ever drawn there ; why don't you do a stroke of 
business with me ? Come ; can't I tempt you ? ' Not a man of 
them, sir, would be bold enough to tiy it on, for love or money." 

" They dread him so much ? " said I. 

"Dread him," said Wemmick. "I believe you they dread him. 
Not but what he's artful, even in his defiance of them. No silver, 
sir. 'Britannia metal, every spoon." 

" So they wouldn't have much," I observed, " even if they " 

" Ah ! But he would have much," said Wemmick, cutting me 
short, " and they know it. He'd have their lives, and the lives of 
scores of 'em. He'd have aU he could get. And it's impossible to 
say what he couldn't get, if he gave his mind to it." 

I was falling into meditation on my guardian's greatness, when 
Wemmick remarked : 

"As to the absence of plate, that's only his natural depth, 
you know. A river's its natural depth, and he's his natural depth. 
Look at his watch-chain. That's real enough." 

"It's very massive," said I. 

" Massive 1 " repeated Wemmick. " I think so. And his watch 
is a gold repeater, and worth a hundred pound if it's worth a 
penny. Mr. Pip, there are about seven hundred thieves in this 
town who know all about that watch ; there's not a man, a woman, 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 175 

or a child, among them, who wouldn't identify the smallest link 
in that chain, and drop it as if it was red-hot, if inveigled into 
touching it." 

At first with such discourse, and afterwards with conversation 
of a more general nature, did Mr. Wemmick and I beguile the time 
and the road, until he gave me to understand that we had arrived 
in the district of Walworth. 

It appeared to be a collection of black lanes, ditches, and little 
gardens, and to present the aspect of a rather dull retirement. 
Wemmick's house was a little wooden cottage in the midst of plots 
of garden, and the top of it was cut out and painted like a battery 
mounted with guns. 

"My own doing," said Wemmick. "Looks pretty; don't it?" 

I highly commended it. I think it was the smallest house I 
ever saw ; with the queerest Gothic windows (by far the greater 
part of them sham), and a Gothic door, almost too small to get 
in at. 

" That's a real flagstaff, you see," said Wemmick, " and on Sun- 
days I run up a real flag. Then look here. After I have crossed 
this bridge, I hoist it up — so — and cut off the commimication." 

The bridge was a plank, and it crossed a chasm about four feet 
wide and two deep. But it was very pleasant to see the pride 
with which he hoisted it up, and made it fast ; smiling as he did 
so, with a relish, and not merely mechanically. 

"At nine o'clock eveiy night, Greenwich time," said Wemmick, 
" the gun fires. There he is, you see ! And when you hear him 
go, I think you'll say he's a Stinger." 

The piece of ordnance referred to, was mounted in a separate 
fortress, constructed of lattice-work. It was protected from the 
weather by an ingenious little tarpaulin contrivance in the nature 
of an umbrella. 

"Then, at the back," said Wemmick, "out of sight, so as not 
to impede the idea of fortifications — for it's a principle with me, 
if you have an idea, carry it out and keep it up — I don't know 
whether that's your opinion " 

I said, decidedly. 

" — At the back, there's a pig, and there are fowls and rabbits ; 
then I knock together my own little frame, you see, and gi'ow 
cucumbers ; and you'll judge at supper what sort of a salad I can 
raise. So, sir," said Wemmick, smiling again, but seriously, too, 
as he shook his head, " if you can suppose the little place besieged, 
it would hold out a devil of a time in point of provisions." 

Then, he conducted me to a bower about a dozen yards off, but 
which was approached by such ingenious twists of path that it 



176 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

took quite a long time to get at ; and in this retreat our glasses 
were already set forth. Our punch was cooling in an ornamental 
lake, on whose margin the bower was raised. This piece of water 
(with an island in the middle which might have been the salad for 
supper) was of a circular form, and he had constnicted a fountain 
in it, which, when you set a little mill going and took a cork out 
of a pipe, played to that powerful extent that it made the back of 
your hand quite wet. 

"I am my own engineer, and my own carpenter, and my own 
plumber, and my own gardener, and my own Jack of all Trades," 
said Wemmick, in acknowledging my compliments. " Well, it's a 
good thing, you know. It brushes the Newgate cobwebs away, 
and pleases the Aged. You wouldn't mind being at once intro- 
duced to the Aged, would you ? It wouldn't put you out ? " 

I expressed the readiness I felt, and we went into the castle. 
There, we found, sitting by a fire, a very old man in a flannel coat : 
clean, cheerfid, comfortable, and well cared for, but intensely deaf. 

" Well, aged parent," said Wemmick, shaking hands with him 
in a cordial and jocose way, " how am you? " 

"All right, John; all right !" replied the old man. 

" Here's Mr. Pip, aged parent," said Wemmick, "and I wish you 
could hear his name. Nod away at him, Mr. Pip ; that's what he 
likes. Nod away at him, if you please, like winking ! " 

"This is a fine place of my son's, sir," cried the old man, while 
I nodded as hard as I possibly could. " This is a pretty pleasure- 
ground, sir. This spot and these beautiful works upon it ought to 
be kept together by the Nation, after my son's time, for the peo- 
ple's enjoyment." 

" You're as proud of it as Punch ; ain't you, Aged ? " said Wem- 
mick, contemplating the old man, with his hard face really softened ; 
" there's a nod for you ; " giving him a tremendous one ; " there's 
another for you;" giving him a still more tremendous one; "you 
like that, don't you ? If you're not tired, Mr. Pip — though I 
know it's tiring to strangers — will you tip him one more ? You 
can't think how it pleases him." 

I tipped him several more, and he was in great spirits. We left 
him bestirring himself to feed the fowls, and we sat down to oui- 
punch in the arbour; where Wemmick told me as he smoked a 
pipe, that it had taken him a good many years to bring the prop- 
erty up to its present pitch of perfection. 

" Is it your own, Mr. Wemmick 1 " 

" yes," said Wemmick, "I have got hold of it, a bit at a time. 
It's a freehold, by George ! " 

" Is it, indeed ? I hope Mr. Jaggers admires it ? " 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 177 

" Never seen it," said Wemmick. " Never heard of it. Never 
seen the Aged. Never heard of him. No ; the office is one thing, 
and private life is another. When I go into the office, I leave the 
Castle behind me, and when I come into the Castle, I leave the 
office behind me. If it's not in any way disagreeable to you, you'll 
oblige me by doing the same. I don't wish it professionally spoken 
about." 

Of course I felt my good faith involved in the observance of his 
request. The punch being very nice, we sat there drinking it and 
talking, until it was almost nine o'clock. " Getting near gun-fire," 
said Wemmick then, as he laid down his pipe ; " it's the Aged's 
treat." 

Proceeding into the Castle again, we found the Aged heating 
the poker, with expectant eyes, as a preliminary to the performance 
of this great nightly ceremony. Wemmick stood with his watch 
in his hand until the moment was come for him to take the red-hot 
poker from the Aged, and repair to the battery. He took it, and 
went out, and presently the Stinger went off with a bang that shook 
the crazy little box of a cottage as if it must fall to pieces, and 
made every glass and teacup in it ring. Upon this the Aged — 
who I believe would have been blown out of his arm-chair but for 
holding on by the elbows — cried out exultingly, " He's fired ! I 
heerd him ! " and I nodded at the old gentleman until it is no figure 
of speech to declare that I absolutely could not see him. 

The interval between that time and supper, Wemmick devoted 
to showing me his collection of curiosities. They were mostly of a 
felonious character ; comprising the pen with which a celebrated 
forgery had been committed, a distinguished razor or two, some 
locks of hair, and several manuscript confessions written under con- 
demnation — upon which Mr. Wemmick set particular value as 
being, to use his own words, " every one of 'em Lies, sir." These 
were agreeably dispersed among small specimens of china and glass, 
various neat trifles made by the proprietor of the museum, and 
some tobacco-stoppers carved by the Aged. They were all dis- 
played in that chamber of the Castle into which I had been first 
inducted, and which served, not only as the general sitting-room, 
but as the kitchen too, if I might judge from a saucepan on the 
hob, and a brazen bijou over the fireplace designed for the suspen- 
sion of a roasting-jack. 

There was a neat little girl in attendance, who looked after the 
Aged in the day. When she had laid the supper-cloth, the bridge 
was lowered to give her the means of egress, and she withdrew for 
the night. The supper was excellent ; and though the Castle was 
rather subject to dry-rot, insomuch that it tasted like a bad nut, 



178 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

and though the pig might have been farther off, I was heartily- 
pleased with my whole entertainment. Nor was there any draw- 
back on my little turret bedroom, beyond there being such a very 
thin ceiling between me and the flagstaff, that when I lay down 
on my back in bed, it seemed as if I had to balance that pole on 
my forehead all night. 

Wemmick was up early in the morning, and I am afraid I heard 
him cleaning my boots. After that, he fell to gardening, and I 
saw him from my Gothic window pretending to employ the Aged, 
and nodding at him in a most devoted manner. Our breakfast was 
as good as the supper, and at half-past eight precisely we started 
for Little Britain. By degrees, Wemmick got dryer and harder as 
we went along, and his mouth tightened into a post-office again. 
At last, when we got to his place of business and he pulled out 
his key from his coat-collar, he looked as unconscious of his Wal- 
worth property as if the Castle and the drawbridge and the arbour 
and the lake and the fountain and the Aged, had all been blown 
into space together by the last discharge of the Stinger. 



CHAPTER XXVI. 

It fell out as Wemmick had told me it would, that I had an 
early opportunity of comparing my guardian's establishment with 
that of his cashier and clerk. My guardian was in his room, wash- 
ing his hands with his scented soap, when I went into the office 
from Walworth ; and he called me to him, and gave me the invita- 
tion for myself and friends which Wemmick had prepared me to 
receive. "No ceremony," he stipulated, "and no dinner dress, 
and say to-morrow." I asked him where we should come to (for I 
had no idea where he lived), and I beheve it was in his general 
objection to make anything like an admission, that he replied, 
" Come here, and I'll take you home with me." I embrace this 
opportunity of remarking that he washed his clients off, as if it 
were a surgeon or a dentist. He had a closet in his room, fitted 
up for the purpose, which smelt of the scented soap like a per- 
fumer's shop. It had an unusually large jack-towel on a roller 
inside the door, and he would wash his hands, and wipe them and 
dry them all over this towel, whenever he came in from a police- 
court or dismissed a client from his room. When I and my friends 
repaired to him at six o'clock next day, he seemed to have been 
engaged on a case of a darker complexion than usual, for, we found 
him with his head butted into this closet, not only washing his 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 179 

hands, but laving his face and gargling his throat. And even 
when he had done all that, and had gone all round the jack-towel, 
he took out his penknife and scraped the case out of his nails 
before he put his coat on. 

There were some people slinking about as usual when we passed 
out into the street, who were evidently anxious to speak with him ; 
but there was something so conclusive in the halo of scented soap 
which encircled his presence, that they gave it up for that day. 
As we walked along westward, he was recognised ever and again 
by some ftice in the crowd of the streets, and whenever that hap- 
pened he talked louder to me ; but he never otherwise recognised 
anybody, or took notice that anybody recognised him. 

He conducted us to Gerrard-street, Soho, to a house on the 
south side of that street, rather a stately house of its kind, but 
dolefully in want of painting, and with dirty windows. He took 
out his key and opened the door, and we all went into a stone hall, 
bare, gloomy, and little used. So, up a dark brown staircase into 
a series of three dark brown rooms on the first floor. There were 
carved garlands on the panelled walls, and as he stood among 
them giving us welcome, I know what kind of loops I thought 
they looked like. 

Dinner was laid in the best of these rooms ; the second was his 
dressing-room ; the third, his bedroom. He told us that he held 
the whole house, but rarely used more of it than we saw. The 
table was comfortably laid — no silver in the service, of course — 
and at the side of his chair was a capacious dumb-waiter, with a 
variety of bottles and decanters on it, and four dishes of fruit for 
desert. I noticed throughout, that he kept everything under his 
own hand, and distributed everything himself 

There was a bookcase in the room ; I saw from the backs of the 
books, that they were about evidence, criminal law, criminal biog- 
raphy, trials, acts of parliament, and such things. The furniture 
was all very solid and good, like his watch-chain. It had an ofii- 
cial look, however, and there was nothing merely ornamental to be 
seen. In a corner, was a little table of papers with a shaded 
lamp; so that he seemed to bring the office home with him in 
that respect too, and to wheel it out of an evening and fall to 
work. 

As he had scarcely seen my three companions until now — for, 
he and I had walked together — he stood on the hearth-rug, after 
ringing the bell, and took a searching look at them. To my sur- 
prise, he seemed at once to be principally, if not solely, interested 
in Drummle. 

" Pip," said he, putting his large hand on my shoulder and mov- 



180 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

ing me to the window, " I don't know one from the other. Who's 
the Spider ? " 

" The spider ? " said I. 

" The blotchy, sprawly, sulky fellow." 

" That's Bentley Drummle," I replied; "the one with the deli- 
cate face is Startop." 

Not making the least account of " the one with the delicate 
face," he returned, " Bentley Drummle is his name, is it ? I like the 
look of that fellow." 

He immediately began to talk to Drummle : not at all deterred 
by his replying in his heavy reticent w^ay, but apparently led on 
by it to screw discourse out of him. I was looking at the two, 
when there came between me and them, the housekeeper, with the 
first dish for the table. 

She was a woman of about forty, I supposed — but I may have 
thought her younger than she was. Rather tall, of a lithe nimble 
figure, extremely pale, with large faded eyes, and a quantity of 
streaming hair. I cannot say whether any diseased affection of 
the heart caused her lips to be parted as if she were panting, and 
her face to bear a curious expression of suddenness and flutter ; but 
I know that I had been to see Macbeth at the theatre, a night or 
two before, and that her face looked to me as if it were all disturbed 
by fiery air, like the faces I had seen rise out of the Witches' 
caldron. 

She set the dish on, touched my guardian quietly on the arm 
with a finger to notify that dinner was ready, and vanished. We 
took our seats at the round table, and my guardian kept Drummle 
on one side of him, while Startop sat on the other. It w^as a noble 
dish of fish that the housekeeper had put on table, and we had a 
joint of equally choice mutton afterwards, and then an equally 
choice bird. Sauces, wines, all the accessories we wanted, and all 
of the best, were given out by our host from his dumb-waiter ; and 
when they had made the circuit of the table, he always put them 
back again. Similarly, he dealt us clean plates and knives and 
forks, for each course, and dropped those just disused into two 
baskets on the ground by his chair. No other attendant than the 
housekeeper appeared. She set on every dish; and I alwaj^s saw 
in her face, a face rising out of the caldron. Years afterwards, I 
made a dreadful likeness of that woman, by causing a face that 
had no other natural resemblance to it than it derived from flow- 
ing air, to pass behind a bowl of flaming spirits in a dark room. 

Induced to take particular notice of the housekeeper, both by 
her own striking appearance and by Wemmick's preparation, I 
observed that whenever she was in the room, she kept her eyes 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 181 

attentively on my guardian, and that she would remove her hands 
from any dish she put before him, hesitatingly, as if she dreaded 
his calling her back, and wanted him to speak when she was nigh, 
if he had anything to say. I fancied that I could detect in his 
manner a consciousness of this, and a purpose of always holding 
her in suspense. 

Dinner went off gaily, and, although my guardian seemed to 
follow rather than originate subjects, I knew that he wrenched the 
weakest part of our dispositions out of us. For myself, I found 
that I was expressing my tendency to lavish expenditure, and to 
patronise Herbert, and to boast of my great prospects, before I 
quite knew that I had opened my lips. It was so with all of us, 
but with no one more than Drummle : the development of whose 
inclination to gird in a grudging and suspicious way at the rest, 
was screwed out of him before the fish was taken off. 

It was not then, but when we had got to the cheese, that our con- 
versation turned upon our rowing feats, and that Drummle was 
rallied for coming up behind of a night in that slow amphibious 
way of his. Drummle, upon this, informed our host that he much 
preferred our room to our company, and that as to skill he was 
more than our master, and that as to strength he could scatter 
us like chaff. By some invisible agency, my guardian wound him 
up to a pitch little short of ferocity about this trifle ; and he fell to 
baring and spanning his arm to show how muscular it was, and we 
all fell to baring and spanning our arms in a ridiculous manner. 

Now, the housekeeper was at that time clearing the table ; my 
guardian, taking no heed of her, but with the side of his face 
turned from her, was leaning back in his chair biting the side of 
his forefinger and showing an interest in Drummle, that, to me, was 
quite inexplicable. Suddenly, he clapped his large hand on the 
housekeeper's, like a trap, as she stretched it across the table. So 
suddenly and smartly did he do this, that we all stopped in our 
foolish contention. 

"If you talk of strength," said Mr. Jaggers, " /'U show you a 
wrist. Molly, let them see your wrist." 

Her entrapped hand was on the table, but she had already put 
her other hand behind her waist. " Master," she said, in a low 
voice, with her eyes attentively and entreatingly fixed upon him, 
"Don't." 

"/'ll show you a wrist," repeated Mr. Jaggers, with an im- 
movable determination to show it. " Molly, let them see your 
wrist." 

" Master," she again murmured. " Please ! " 

"Molly," said Mr. Jaggers, not looking at her, but obstinately 



182 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

looking at the opposite side of the room, " let them see both your 
wrists. Show them. Come ! " 

He took his hand from hers, and tui'ned that wrist up on the 
table. She brought her other hand from behind her, and held the 
two out side by side. The last wrist was much disfigured — deeply 
scarred and scarred across and across. When she held her hands 
out, she took her eyes from Mr. Jaggers, and turned them watch- 
fully on every one of the rest of us in succession. 

" There's power here," said Mr. Jaggers, coolly tracing out the 
sinews with his forefinger. " Very few men have the power of 
wiist that this woman has. It's remarkable what mere force of 
gi'ip there is in these hands. I have had occasion to notice many 
hands ; but I never saw stronger in that respect, man's or woman's, 
than these." 

While he said these words in a leisurely critical style, she con- 
tinued to .look at every one of us in regular succession as we sat. 
The moment he ceased, she looked at him again. " That'll do, 
Molly," said Mr. Jaggers, giving her a slight nod; "you have been 
admired, and can go." She withdrew her hands and went out of 
the room, and Mr. Jaggers, putting the decanters on from his dumb- 
waiter, filled his glass and passed round the wine. 

"At half-past nine, gentlemen," said he, "we must break up. 
Pray make the best use of your time. I am glad to see you all, 
Mr. Drummle, I drink to you." 

If his object in singling out Drummle were to bring him out 
still more, it perfectly succeeded. In a sulky triumph, Drummle 
showed his morose depreciation of the rest of us, in a more and 
more offensive degree, until he became downright intolerable. 
Through all his stages, Mr. Jaggers followed him with the same 
strange interest. He actually seemed to serve as a zest to Mr. 
Jaggers's wine. 

In our boyish want of discretion I dare say we took too much 
to drink, and I know we talked too much. We became particu- 
larly hot upon some boorish sneer of Drummle's, to the effect that 
we were too free with our money. It led to my remarking, with 
more zeal than discretion, that it came with a bad grace from him, to 
whom Startop had lent money in my presence but a week or so before. 

" Well," retorted Drummle, " he'll be paid." 

"I don't mean to imply that he won't," said I, "but it might 
make you hold your tongue about us and our money, I should 
think." 

" You should think ! " retorted Drummle. "Oh Lord ! " 

"I dare say," I went on, meaning to be very severe, "that you 
wouldn't lend money to any of us if we wanted it." 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 183 

" You are right," said Dnimmle. " I wouldn't lend one of you 
a sixpence. I wouldn't lend anybody a sixpence." 

" Rather mean to borrow under those circumstances, I should 
say." 

" You shoidd say," repeated Drummle. " Oh Lord ! " 

This was so very aggravating — the more especially as I found 
myself making no way against his surly obtuseness — that I 
said, disregarding Herbert's efforts to check me: 

" Come, Mr. Drummle, since we are on the subject, I'll tell you 
what passed between Herbert here and me, when you borrowed 
that money." 

" / don't want to know what passed between Herbert there 
and you," growled Dmmmle. And I think he added in a lower 
gi'owl, that we might both go to the de^il and shake ourselves. 

"I'll tell you, however," said I, "whether you want to know or 
not. We said that as you put it into your pocket very glad to 
get it, you seemed to be immensely amused at his being so weak 
as to lend it." 

Drummle laughed outright, and sat laughing in our faces, with 
his hands in his pockets and his round shoulders raised; plainly 
signifving that it was quite true, and that he despised us as asses 
aU. 

Hereupon Startop took him in hand, though with a much better 
grace than I had shown, and exhorted him to be a little more 
agreeable. Startop being a lively bright young fellow, and 
Drummle being the exact opposite, the latter was always dis- 
posed to resent Mm as a direct personal affront. He now re- 
torted in a coarse lumpish way, and Startop tried to turn the 
discussion aside with some small pleasantry that made us aU 
laugh. Resenting this little success more than anything, Drum- 
mle, without any threat or warning, pulled his hands out of his 
pockets, ch'opped his round shoulders, swore, took up a large glass, 
and woidd have flung it at his adversaiy s head, but for our enter- 
tainer's dexterously seizing it at the instant when it was raised for 
that purpose. 

"Gentlemen," said Mr. Jaggers, deliberately putting down the 
glass, and hauling out his gold repeater by its massive chain, " I 
am exceedingly sony to announce that it's half-past nine." 

On this hint we all rose to depart. Before we got to the street 
door, Startop was cheerily calling Drummle " old boy," as if nothing 
had happened. But the old boy was so far from responding, that 
he would not even walk to Hammersmith on the same side of the 
way ; so, Herbert and I, who remained in to\vn, saw them going 
down the street on opposite sides; Startop leading, and Drummle 



184 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

lagging behind in the shadow of the houses, much as he was wont 
to follow in his boat. 

As the door was not yet shut, I thought I would leave Herbert 
there for a moment, and run uj^stairs again to say a word to my 
guardian. I found him in his dressing-room surrounded by his 
stock of boots, already hard at it, v/ashing his hands of us. 

I told him I had come up again to say how sorry I was that 
anything disagreeable should have occurred, and that I hoped he 
would not blame me much. 

"Pooh!" said he, sluicing his face, and speaking through the 
water-drops; "it's nothing, Pip. I like that Spider though." 

He had turned towards me now, and was shaking his head, and 
blowing, and towelling himself. 

" I am glad you like him, sir," said I — " but I don't." 

"Ko, no," my guardian assented; "don't have too much to do 
with him. Keep as clear of him as you can. But I like the 
fellow, Pip ; he is one of the true sort. Why, if I was a fortune- 
teUer " 

Looking out of the towel, he caught my eye. 

"But I am not a fortune-teller," he said, letting his head drop 
into a festoon of towel, and towelling away at his two ears. " You 
know what I am, don't you? Good night, Pip." 

" Good night, sir." 

In about a month after that, the Spider's time with Mr. Pocket 
was up for good, and, to the great relief of all the house but Mrs. 
Pocket, he went home to the family hole. 



CHAPTER XXVII. 

" My Dear Me. Pip, 

" I write this by request of Mr. Gargery, for to let you know that 
he is going to London in company with Mr. Wopsle and would be 
glad if agreeable to be allowed to see you. He would call at 
Barnard's Hotel Tuesday morning at nine o'clock, when if not 
agreeable please leave word. Your poor sister is much the same 
as when you left. We talk of you in the kitchen every night, and 
wonder what you are saying and doing. If now considered in the 
light of a liberty, excuse it for the love of poor old days. No 
more, dear Mr. Pip, from 

" Your ever obliged, and affectionate servant, 

"Biddy." 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 185 

"P.S. He wishes me most particular to write what larks. He 
says you will understand. I hope and do not doubt it will be 
agreeable to see him even though a gentleman, for you had ever a 
good heart, and he is a worthy worthy man. I have read him all 
excepting only the last little sentence, and he wishes me most par- 
ticular to write again what larks.'''' 

I received this letter by post on Monday morning, and therefore 
its appointment was for next day. Let me confess exactly, with 
what feelings I looked forward to Joe's coming. 

Not with pleasure, though I was bound to him by so many ties ; 
no ; with considerable disturbance, some mortification, and a keen 
sense of incongruity. If I could have kept him away by paying 
money, I certainly would have paid money. My greatest reassur- 
ance was, that he w^as coming to Barnard's Inn, not to Hammer- 
smith, and consequently would not fall in Bentley Drummle's way. 
I had little objection to his being seen by Herbert or his father, 
for both of whom I had a respect ; but I had the sharpest sensitive- 
ness as to his being seen by Drummle, whom I held in contempt. 
So, throughout life, our worst weaknesses and meannesses are 
usually committed for the sake of the people whom we most 
despise. 

I had begun to be always decorating the chambers in some quite 
unnecessary and inappropriate way or other, and very expensive 
those wrestles with Barnard proved to be. By this time, the rooms 
were vastly different from what I had found them, and I enjoyed 
the honour of occupying a few prominent pages in the books of a 
neighbouring upholsterer. I had got on so fast of late, that I had 
even started a boy in boots — top boots — in bondage and slavery 
to whom I might be said to pass my days. For, after I had made 
this monster (out of the refuse of my washerwoman's family) and 
had clothed him with a blue coat, canary waistcoat, white cravat, 
creamy breeches, and the boots already mentioned, I had to find 
him a little to do and a great deal to eat ; and with both of these 
horrible requirements he haunted my existence. 

This avenging phantom was ordered to be on duty at eight on 
Tuesday morning in the hall (it was two feet square, as charged 
for floorcloth), and Herbert suggested certain things for breakfast 
that he thought Joe would like. While I felt sincerely obliged to 
him for being so interested and considerate, I had an odd half- 
provoked sense of suspicion upon me, that if Joe had been coming 
to see him, he wouldn't have been quite so brisk about it. 

However, I came into towm on the Monday night to be ready for 
Joe, and I got up early in the morning, and caused the sitting-room 



186 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

and breakfast-table to assume their most splendid appearance. 
Unfortunately the morning was drizzly, and an angel could not 
have concealed the fact that Barnard was shedding sooty tears 
outside the window, like some weak giant of a Sweep. 

As the time approached I shoidd have liked to run away, but 
the Avenger pursuant to orders was in the hall, and presently I 
heard Joe, on the staircase. I knew it was Joe, by his clumsy 
manner of coming upstairs — his state boots being always too big 
for him — and by the time it took him to read the names on the 
other floors in the course of his ascent. AVhen at last he stopped 
outside our door, I could hear his finger tracing over the painted 
letters of my name, and I afterwards distinctly heard him breath- 
ing in at the keyhole. Finally he gave a faint single rap, and 
Pepper — such was the compromising name of the avenging boy 
— announced " Mr. Gargery ! " I thought he never would have 
done wiping his feet, and that I must have gone out to lift him off 
the mat, but at last he came in. 

" Joe, how are you, Joe ? " 

" Pip, how AIR you, Pip ? " 

With his good honest face all glowing and shining, and his hat 
put down on the floor between us, he caught both my hands and 
worked them straight up and down, as if I had been the last- 
patented Pump. 

" I am glad to see you, Joe. Give me your hat." 

But Joe, taking it up carefully with both hands, like a bird's- 
nest with eggs in it, wouldn't hear of parting with that piece of 
property, and persisted in standing talking over it in a most un- 
comfortable way. 

"Which you have that gi'owed," said Joe, "and that swelled, 
and that gentle-folked ; " Joe considered a little before he discovered 
this word ; "as to besure you are a honour to your king and 
country." 

" Aui you, Joe, look wonderfully well." 

"Thank God," said Joe, "I'm ekerval to most. And your sis- 
ter, she's no worse than she were. And Biddy, she's ever right and 
ready. And all friends is no backerder, if not no forarder. 'Ceptin' 
Wopsle : he's had a drop." 

All this time (still with both hands taking great care of the 
bird's-nest), Joe was rolling his eyes round and round the room, 
and round and round the flowered pattern of my dressing-gown. 

"Had a drop, Joe?" 

"Why yes," said Joe, lowering his voice, "he's left the Church 
and went into the playacting. Which the playacting have likewise 
brought him to London along with me. Ajid his wish were," said 



Ji 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 187 

Joe, getting the bird's-nest under his left arm for the moment, and 
groping in it for an egg with his right ; "if no otfence, as I would 
'and you that." 

I took what Joe gave me, and found it to be the crumpled play- 
bill of a small metropolitan theatre, announcing the first appearance, 
in that very week, of " the celebrated Provincial Amateur of Roscian 
renown, whose unique performance in the highest tragic walk of 
our National Bard has lately occasioned so great a sensation in 
local dramatic circles." 

" Were you at his performance, Joe ? " I inquired. 

" I tvere," said Joe, with emphasis and solemnity. 

" Was there a great sensation 1 " 

"Why," said Joe, "yes, there certainly were a peck of orange- 
peel. Partickler when he see the ghost. Though I put it to 
yourself, sir, whether it were calc'lated to keep a man up to his 
work with a good hart, to be continiwally cutting in betwixt him 
and the Ghost Avith * Amen ! ' A man may have had a misfortun' 
and been in the Church," said Joe, lowering his voice to an argu- 
mentative and feeling tone, " but that is no reason why you should 
put him out at such a time. Which I meantersay, if the ghost of 
a man's own father cannot be allowed to claim his attention, what 
can, Sir ? Still more, when his mourning 'at is unfortunately made 
so small as that the weight of the black feathers brings it off, try 
to keep it on how you may." 

A ghost-seeing effect in Joe's ovm countenance informed me that 
Herbert had entered the room. So, I presented Joe to Herbert, 
who held out his hand ; but Joe backed from it, and held on by 
the bird's-nest. 

"Your servant, Sir," said Joe, "which I hope as you and Pip" 
— here his eye fell on the Avenger, who was putting some toast 
on table, and so plainly denoted an intention to make that young 
gentleman one of the family, that I fro wired it down and confused 
him more — "I meantersay, you two gentlemen — which I hope 
as you gets your elths in this close spot ? For the present may be 
a wery good inn, according to London opinions," said Joe, confi- 
dentially, " and I believe it's character do stand i ; but I wouldn't 
keep a pig in it myself — not in the case that I wished him to fat- 
ten wholesome and to eat with a meller flavour on him." 

Having borne this flattering testimony to the merits of our 
dwelling-place, and having incidentally shown this tendency to call 
me " sir," Joe, being invited to sit down to table, looked all round 
the room for a suitable spot on which to deposit his hat — as if it 
were only on some few very rare substances in nature that it could 
find a resting-place — and ultimately stood it on an extreme corner 



188 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

of the chimney-piece, from which it ever afterwards fell oflf at 
intervals. 

"Do you take tea, or coffee, Mr. Gargery?" asked Herbert, 
who always presided of a morning. 

"Thankee, Sir," said Joe, stiff from head to foot, "I'll take 
whichever is most agreeable to youi-self." 

" What do you say to coffee 1 " 

"Thankee, Sir," returned Joe, evidently dispirited by the pro- 
posal, " since you are so kind as to make chice of coffee, I will not 
run contrairy to your own opinions. But don't you never find it a 
httle 'eating ? " 

" Say tea, then," said Herbert, pouring it out. 

Here Joe's hat tumbled off" the mantel-piece, and he started out 
of his chair and picked it up, and fitted it to the same exact spot. 
As if it were an absolute point of good breeding that it should 
tumble off again soon. 

" When did you come to town, Mr. Gargery 1 " 

" W^ere it yesterday afternoon ? " said Joe, after coughing behind 
his hand as if he had had time to catch the whooping-cough since 
he came. " Xo it were not. Yes it were. Yes. It were yester- 
day afternoon " (with an appearance of mingled wisdom, rehef, and 
strict impartiahty). 

" Have you seen anything of London, yet ? " 

" VHij, yes, Sir," said Joe, " me and Wopsle went off straight 
to look at the Blacking Ware'us. But we didn't find that it come 
up to its likeness in the red bills at the shop doors : which I mean- 
tersay," added Joe, in an explanatory manner, " as it is there drawd 
too architectooralooral." 

I really believe Joe would have prolonged this word (mightily 
expressive to my mind of some architecture that I know) into a 
perfect Chorus, but for his attention being providentially attracted 
by his hat, which was toppling. Indeed, it demanded from him a 
constant attention, and a quickness of eye and hand, very like that 
exacted by wicket-keeping. He made extraordinary play with it, and 
showed the gi'eatest skill ; now, mshing at it and catching it neatly 
as it dropped ; now, merely stopping it midway, beating it up, and 
humouring it in various parts of the room and against a good deal 
of the pattern of the paper on the waU, before he felt it safe to 
close with it : finally splashing it into the slop-basin, where I took 
the liberty of laying hands upon it. 

As to his shii't-coUar, and his coat-collar, they were perplexing 
to reflect upon — insoluble mysteries both. Why shoidd a man 
scrape himself to that extent, before he coidd consider himself full 
dressed 'i Why should he suppose it necessary to be purified by 



190 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

suffering for his holiday clothes 1 Then he fell into such unaccount- 
able fits of meditation, with his fork midway between his plate 
and his mouth ; had his eyes attracted in such strange directions ; 
was afflicted with such remarkable coughs; sat so far from the 
table, and dropped so much more than he ate, and pretended that 
he hadn't dropped it ; that I was heartily glad when Herbert left 
us for the city. 

I had neither the good sense nor the good feeling to know that 
this was all my fault, and that if I had been ej^sier with Joe, Joe 
would have been easier with me. I felt impatient of him and out 
of temper mth him ; in which condition he heaped coals of fire on 
my head. 

" Us two being now alone, Sir " — began Joe. 

"Joe," I interrupted, pettishly, "how can you call me Sir?" 

Joe looked at me for a single instant mth something faintly Hke 
reproach. Utterly preposterous as his cravat was, and as his col- 
lars were, I was conscious of a sort of dignity in the look. 

"Us two being now alone," resumed Joe, "and me having the 
intentions and abilities to stay not many minutes more, I will now 
conclude — leastways begin — -to mention what have led to my 
having had the present honour. For was it not," said Joe, with 
his old air of lucid exposition, " that my only ^vish were to be use- 
ful to you, I should not have had the honour of breaking wittles 
in the company and abode of gentlemen." 

I was so unwilling to see the look again, that I made no remon- 
strance against this tone. 

"Well, Sir," pursued Joe, "this is how it were. I were at the 
Bargemen t'other night, Pip ; " whenever he subsided into affection, 
he called me Pip, and whenever he relapsed into politeness he called 
me Sir; "when there come up in his shay-cart Pumblechook. 
Which that same identical," said Joe, going dowm a new track, "do 
comb my 'air the wrong way sometimes, awful, by giving out up 
and down town as it were him which ever had your infant compan- 
ionation and were looked upon as a playfellow by yourself." 

" Nonsense. It was you, Joe." 

"Which I fully believed it were, Pip," said Joe, slightly tossing 
his head, " though it signify little now. Sir. Well, Pip ; this same 
identical, which his manners is given to blusterous, come to me at 
the Bargemen (wot a pipe and a pint of beer do give refreshment 
to the working-man. Sir, and do not over stimulate), and his word 
were, ' Joseph, Miss Havisham she wish to speak to you.' " 

" Miss Havisham, Joe ? " 

" 'She wished,' were Pumblechook's word, 'to speak to you.'" 
Joe sat and rolled his eyes at the ceiling. 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 191 

"Yes, Joe? Go on, please." 

" Next day. Sir," said Joe, looking at me as if I were a long way 
off, "having cleaned myself, I go and I see Miss A." 

" Miss A., Joe 1 Miss Havisham ? " 

"Which I say, Sir," replied Joe, with an air of legal formality, 
as if he were making his will, "Miss A., or otherways Havisham. 
Her expression air then as foUering : ' Mr. Gargery. You air in 
correspondence with Mr. Pip ? ' Having had a letter from you, I 
were able to say ' I am.' (When I married your sister, Sir, I said 
' I will ; ' and when I answered your friend, Pip, I said, ' I am. ') 
'Would you tell him, then,' said she, 'that which Estella has come 
home, and would be glad to see him.' " 

I felt my face fire up as I looked at Joe. I hope one remote 
cause of its firing, may have been my consciousness that if I 
had known his errand, I should have given him more encourage- 
ment. 

"Biddy," pursued Joe, "when I got home and asked her fur to 
write the message to you, a little hung back. Biddy says, ' I know 
he will be very glad to have it by word of mouth, it is holiday-time, 
you want to see him, go ! ' I have now concluded. Sir," said Joe, 
rising from his chair, "and, Pip, I wish you ever well and ever 
prospering to a greater and greater height." 

" But you are not going now, Joe ? " 

"Yes I am," said Joe. 

" But you are coming back to dinner, Joe ? " 

" No I am not," said Joe. 

Our eyes met, and all the " Sir " melted out of that manly heart 
as he gave me his hand. 

" Pip, dear old chap, life is made of ever so many partings welded 
together, as I may say, and one man's a blacksmith, and one's 
a whitesmith, and one's a goldsmith, and one's a coppersmith. 
Diwisions among such must come, and must be met as they come. 
If there's been any fault at all to-day, it's mine. You and me is 
not two figures to be together in London ; nor yet anywheres else 
but what is private, and beknown, and understood among friends. 
It ain't that I am proud, but that I want to be right, as you shall 
never see me no more in these clothes. I'm wrong in these clothes. 
I'm wrong out of the forge, the kitchen, or off" th' meshes. You 
won't find half so much fault in me if you think of me in my forge 
dress, with my hammer in my hand, or even my pipe. You won't 
find half so much fault in me if, supposing as you should ever wish 
to see me, you come and put your head in at the forge window and 
see Joe the blacksmith, there, at the old anvil, in the old burnt 
apron, sticking to the old work. I'm awful dull, but I hope I've 



192 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

beat out something nigh the rights of this at last. And so God 
bless you, dear old Pip, old chap, God bless you ! " 

I had not been mistaken in my fancy that there was a simple 
dignity in him. The fashion of his dress could no more come in 
its way when he spoke these words, than it could come in its way 
in Heaven. He touched me gently on the forehead, and went out. 
As soon as I could recover myself sufficiently, I hurried out after 
him and looked for him in the neighbouring streets ; but he was 
gone. 



CHAPTER XXVIII. 

It was clear that I must repair to our town next day, and in the 
first flow of my repentance it was equally clear that I must stay 
at Joe's, But, when I had secured my box-place by to-morrow's 
coach, and had been down to Mr. Pocket's and back, I was not by 
any means convinced on the last point, and began to invent reasons 
and make excuses for putting up at the Blue Boar. I should be 
an inconvenience at Joe's ; I was not expected, and my bed would 
not be ready ; I should be too far from Miss Havisham's, and she 
was exacting and mightn't like it. All other swindlers upon earth 
are nothing to the self-swindlers, and with such pretences did I 
cheat myself. Surely a curious thing. That I should innocently 
take a bad half-crown of somebody else's manufacture, is reasonable 
enough ; but that I should knowingly reckon the spurious coin of 
my own make, as good money ! An obliging stranger, under pre- 
tence of compactly folding up my bank-notes for security's sake, 
abstracts the notes and gives me nutshells; but what is his sleight 
of hand to mine, when I fold up my own nutshells and pass them 
on myself as notes ! 

Having settled that I must go to the Blue Boar, my mind was 
much disturbed by indecision whether or no to take the Avenger. 
It was tempting to think of that expensive Mercenary publicly 
airing his boots in the archway of the Blue Boar's posting-yard : it 
was almost solemn to imagine him casually produced in the tailor's 
shop and confounding the disrespectful senses of Trabb's boy. On 
the other hand, Trabb's boy might worm himself into his intimacy 
and tell him things ; or, reckless and desperate wretch as I knew 
he could be, might hoot him in the High-street. My patroness, 
too, might hear of him, and not approve. On the whole, I resolved 
to leave the Avenger behind. 

It was the afternoon coach by which I had taken my place, and. 



< 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 193 

as winter had now come round, I should not arrive at my destina- 
tion until two or three hours after dark. Our time of starting 
from the Cross Keys was two o'clock. I arrived on the ground 
with a quarter of an hour to spare, attended by the Avenger — if 
I may connect that expression with one who never attended on me 
if he could possibly help it. 

At that time it was customary to carry convicts down to the 
dockyards by stage-coach. As I had often heard of them in the 
capacity of outside passenger", and had more than once seen them 
on the high road dangling their ironed legs over the coach roof, I 
had no cause to be surprised when Herbert, meeting me in the yard, 
came up and told me there were two convicts going down with me. 
But I had a reason that was an old reason now, for constitutionally 
faltering whenever I heard the word convict. 

" You don't mind them, Handel 1 " said Herbert. 

"Oh no!" 

" I thought you seemed as if you didn't like them ? " 

" I can't pretend that I do like them, and I suppose you don't 
particularly. But I don't mind them." 

" See ! There they are," said Herbert, " coming out of the Tap. 
What a degraded and vile sight it is ! " 

They had been treating their guard, I suppose, for they had a 
gaoler with them, and all three came out wiping their mouths on 
their hands. The two convicts were handcuffed together, and had 
irons on their legs — irons of a pattern that I knew well. They 
wore the dress that I likewise knew well. Their keeper had a 
brace of pistols, and carried a thick-knobbed bludgeon under his 
arm ; but he was on terms of good understanding with them, and 
stood, with them beside him, looking on at the putting-to of the 
horses, rather with an air as if the convicts were an interesting 
Exhibition not formally open at the moment, and he the Curator. 
One was a taller and stouter man than the other, and appeared as 
a matter of course, according to the mysterious ways of the world 
both convict and free, to have had allotted to him the smaller suit 
of clothes. His arms and legs were like great pincushions of those 
shapes, and his attire disguised him absurdly ; but I knew his half- 
closed eye at one glance. There stood the man whom I had seen 
on the settle at the Three Jolly Bargemen on a Saturday night, 
and who had brought me down with his invisible gun ! 

It was easy to make sure that as yet he knew me no more than 
if he had never seen me in his life. He looked across at me, and 
his eye appraised my watch-chain, and then he incidentally spat 
and said something to the other convict, and they laughed and 
slued themselves round with a clink of their coupling manacle, and 



194 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

looked at something else. The great numbers on their backs, as 
if they were street doors ; their coarse mangy ungainly outer sur- 
face, as if they were lower animals ; their ironed legs, ajDologetically 
garlanded with pocket-handkercliiefs ; and the way in which all 
present looked at them and kept from them; made them (as 
Herbert had said) a most disagreeable and degraded spectacle. 

But this was not the worst of it' It came out that the whole 
of the back of the coach had been taken by a family removing 
from Loudon, and that there were no places for the two prisoners 
but on the seat in front, behind the coachman. Hereupon, a 
chokric gentleman, who had taken the fourth place on that seat, 
flev into a most violent j^assion, and said that it was a breach of 
contract to mix him up with such villainous company, and that it 
was poisonous and pernicious and infamous and shameful, and I 
don't know what else. At this time the coach was ready and the 
coachman impatient, and we were all preparing to get up, and the 
prisoners had come over with their keeper — bringing wdth them 
that curious flavour of bread-poultice, baize, rope-yarn, and hearth- 
stone, which attends the convict presence. 

"Don't take it so much amiss, sir," pleaded the keeper to the 
angry passenger ; " I'll sit next you myself. I'll put 'em on the 
outside of the row. They won't interfere with you, su\ You 
needn't know they're there." 

" And don't blame 7?ie," growled the convict I had recognised. 
" I don't want to go. / am quite ready to stay behind. As fur 
as I am concerned any one's welcome to my place." 

"Or mine," said the other, gruftly. "/ wouldn't have incom- 
moded none of you, if I'd a had my way." Then, they both 
laughed, and began cracking nuts, and spitting the shells about. — 
As I really think I should have liked to do myself, if I had been 
in their place and so despised. 

At length, it was voted that there was no help for the angry 
gentleman, and that he must either go in his chance company or 
remain behind. So, he got into his place, still making complaints, 
and the keeper got into the place next him, and the convicts hauled 
themselves up as well as they could, and the convict I had recog- 
nised sat behind me \\dth his breath on the hair of my head. 

" Good bye, Handel ! " Herbert called out as we started. I 
thought what a blessed fortune it was, that he had found another 
name for me than Pip. 

It is impossible to express with what acuteness I felt the con- 
vict's breathing, not only on the back of my head, but all along 
my spine. The sensation was like being touched in the marrow 
with some pungent and searching acid, and it set my very teeth on 



GREAT EXPECTATIOXS. 19o 

edge. He seemed to have more breathing business to do than 
another man, and to make more noise in doing it ; and I was con- 
scious of growing high-shouldered on one side, in my shrinking 
endeavours to fend him off. 

The weather was miserably raw, and the two cursed the cold. 
It made us all lethargic before we had gone far, and when -we had 
left the Half-way House behind, we habitually dozed and shivered 
and were silent. I dozed off, myself, in considering the question 
whether I ought to restore a couple of pounds sterling to this 
creature before losing sight of him, and how it could best be done. 
In the act of dipping forward as if I were going to bathe among 
the holies, I woke in a fright and took the question up again. 

But I must have lost it longer than I had thought, since, 
although I could recognise nothing in the darkness and the fitful 
lights and shadows of our lamps, I traced marsh country in the 
cold damp Avind that blew at us. Cowering forward for warmth 
and to make me a screen against the wind, the convicts were closer 
to me than before. The very first words I heard them interchange 
as I became conscious, were the words of my own thought, " Two 
One Pound notes." 

" How did he get 'em ? '' said the convict I had never seen. 

"How shoidd I know?" returned the other. "He had 'em 
stowed away somehows. Giv him by friends, I expect." 

"I wish," said the other, with a bitter curse upon the cold, 
" that I had 'em here." 

" Two one pound notes, or friends ? " 

"Two one pound notes. I'd sell aU the friends I ever had, 
for one, and think it a blessed good bargain. AVeU? So he 
says ? " 

"So he says," resumed the convict I had recognised — '*it was 
all said and done in half a minute, behind a pile of timber in the 
Dockyard — ' You're a going to be discharged ! ' Yes, I was. 
Would I find out that boy that had fed him and kep his secret, 
and give him them two one pound notes ? Yes I would. And I 
did." 

"More fool you," growled the other. "I'd have spent 'em on a 
Man, in wittles and chink. He must have been a green one. 
Mean to say he knowed nothing of you 1 " 

"Xot a ha'porth. Different gangs and different ships. He 
was tried again for prison breaking, and got made a Lifer." 

" And was that — Honour ! — the only time you worked out, in 
this part of the country 1 " 

" The only time." 

" AVhat might have been your opinion of the place ? " 



196 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

" A most beastly place. Muclbank, mist, swamp, and work : 
work, swamp, mist, and mudbank." 

They both execrated the place in very strong language, and grad- 
ually growled themselves out, and had nothing left to say. 

After overhearing this dialogue, I should assuredly have got 
down and been left in the solitude and darkness of the highway, 
but for feeling certain that the man had no suspicion of my iden- 
tity. Indeed, I was not only so changed in the course of nature, 
but so differently dressed and so differently circumstanced, that it 
was not at all likely he could have known me without accidental 
help. Still, the coincidence of our being together on the coach, 
was sufficiently strange to fill me with a dread that some other 
coincidence might at any moment connect me, in his hearing, with 
my name. For this reason, I resolved to alight as soon as we 
touched the town, and put myself out of his hearing. This device 
I executed successfully. My little portmanteau was in the boot 
under my feet ; I had but to turn a hinge to get it out ; I threw 
it down before me, got down after it, and was left at the first lamp 
on the first stones of the town pavement. As to the convicts, they 
went their way with the coach, and I knew at what point they 
would be spirited off to the river. In my fancy, I saw the boat 
with its convict crew waiting for them at the slime- washed stairs, 

— again heard the gruff "Give way, you!" like an order to dogs 

— again saw the wicked Noah's Ark lying out on the black water. 
I could not have said what I was afraid of, for my fear was 

altogether undefined and vague, but there was great fear upon me. 
As I walked on to the hotel, I felt that a dread, much exceeding 
the mere apprehension of a painful or disagreeable recognition, 
made me tremble. I am confident that it took no distinctness of 
shape, and that it was the revival for a few minutes of the terror 
of childhood. 

The coffee-room at the Blue Boar was empty, and I had not only 
ordered my dinner there, but had sat down to it, before the waiter 
knew me. As soon as he had apologised for the remissness of his 
memory, he asked me if he should send Boots for Mr. Pumblechook ? 

" No," said I, "certainly not." 

The waiter (it was he who had brought up the Great Remon- 
strance from the Commercials on the day when I was bound) 
appeared surprised, and took the earliest opportunity of putting a 
dirty old copy of a local newspaper so directly in my way, that I 
took it up and read this paragraph : 

"Our readers will learn, not altogether without interest, in 
reference to the recent romantic rise in fortune of a young artificer 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 197 

ill iron of this neighbourhood (what a theme, by the way, for the 
magic pen of our as yet not universally acknowledged townsman 
TooBY, the poet of our columns !) that the youth's earliest patron, 
companion, and friend, was a highly-respected individual not en- 
tirely unconnected with the corn and seed trade, and whose emi- 
uently convenient and commodious business premises are situate 
vvithin a hundred miles of the High-street. It is not wholly irre- 
spective of our personal feelings that we record Him as the Mentor 
of our young Telemachus, for it is good to know that our town 
produced the founder of the latter's fortunes. Does the thought- 
contracted brow of the local Sage or the lustrous eye of local 
Beauty inquire whose fortunes ? We believe that Quintin Matsys 
was the Blacksmith of Antwerp. Verb. Sap." 

I entertain a conviction, based upon large experience, that if in 
the days of my prosperity I had gone to the North Pole, I should 
have met somebody there, wandering Esquimaux or civilised man, 
who would have told me that Pumblechook was my earliest patron 
and the founder of my fortunes. 



CHAPTER XXIX. 

Betimes in the morning I was up and out. It was too early 
yet to go to Miss Havisham's, so I loitered into the country on 
Miss Havisham's side of town — which was not Joe's side ; I 
could go there to-morrow — thinking about my patroness, and 
painting brilliant pictures of her plans for me. 

She had adopted Estella, she had as good as adopted me, and it 
could not fail to be her intention to bring us together. She 
reserved it for me to restore the desolate house, admit the sunshine 
into the dark rooms, set the clocks a going and the cold hearths a 
blazing, tear down the cobwebs, destroy the vermin — in short, do 
all the shining deeds of the young Knight of romance, and marry 
the Princess. I had stopped to look at the house as I passed ; 
and its seared red brick walls, blocked windows, and strong green 
ivy clasping even the stacks of chimneys with its twigs and tendons, 
as if with sine^^^ old arms, had made up a rich attractive mystery, 
of which I was the hero. Estella was the inspiration of it, and 
the heart of it, of course. But, though she had taken such strong 
possession of me, though my fancy and my hope were so set upon 
her, though her influence on my boyish life and character had been 
all-powerful, I did not, even that romantic morning, invest her 



198 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

with any attributes save those she possessed. I mention this in 
this place, of a fixed purpose, because it is the clue by which I 
am to be followed into my poor labyrinth. According to my expe- 
rience, the conventional notion of a lover cannot be always true. 
The unqualified truth is, that when I loved Estella with the love 
of a man, I loved her simply because I found her irresistible. 
Once for all ; I knew to my sorrow, often and often, if not 
always, that I loved her against reason, against promise, against 
peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement 
that could be. Once for all ; I loved her none the less because I 
knew it, and it had no more influence in restraining me, than if 
I had devoutly believed her to be human perfection. 

I so shaped out my walk as to arrive at the gate at my old 
time. When I had rung at the bell with an unsteady hand, I 
turned my back upon the gate, while I tried to get my breath 
and keep the beating of my heart moderately quiet. I heard the 
side door open, and steps come across the courtyard ; but I pre- 
tended not to hear, even when the gate swimg on its iiisty hinges. 

Being at last touched on the shoulder, I started and turned. 
I started much more naturally then, to find myself confronted by 
a man in a sober grey dress. The last man I should have expected 
to see in that place of porter at Miss Havisham's door. 

"Orlick!" 

"Ah, young master, there's more changes than yours. But 
come in, come in. It's opposed to my orders to hold the gate 
open." 

I entered and he swung it, and locked it, and took the key out. 
" Yes ! " said he, facing round, after doggedly preceding me a few 
steps towards the house. " Here I am ! " 

" How did you come here ? " 

"I come here," he retorted, "on my legs. I had my box 
brought alongside me in a barrow." 

" Are you here for good ? " 

"I ain't here for harm, young master, I suppose." 

I was not so sure of that. I had leisure to entertain the retort 
in my mind, while he slowly lifted his heavy glance from the pave- 
ment, up my legs and arms to my face. 

" Then you have left the forge?" I said. 

" Do this look like a forge ? " replied Orlick, sending his glance 
all round him with an air of injury. " Now, do it look Hke it ? " 

I asked him how long he had left Gargery's forge ? 

"One day is so like another here," he replied, "that I don't 
know without casting it up. However, I come here some time 
since you left." 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 199 

"I could have told you that, Orlick." 

"Ah ! " said he, drily. "But then you've got to be a scholar." 

By this time we had come to the house, where I found his room 
to be one just within the side door, with a little window in it look- 
ing on the courtyard. In its small proportions, it was not unlike 
the kind of place usually assigned to a gate-porter in Paris. Cer- 
tain keys were hanging on the wall, to which he now added the 
gate-key; and his patchwork-covered bed was in a little inner 
division or recess. The whole had a slovenly, confined and sleepy 
look, like a cage for a human dormouse : while he, looming dark 
and heavy in the shadow of a corner by the window, looked like 
the human dormouse for whom it was fitted up — as indeed he 
was. 

"I never saw this room before," I remarked; "but there used 
to be no Porter here." 

"No," said he; "not till it got about that there was no pro- 
tection on the premises, and it come to be considered dangerous, 
with convicts and Tag and Rag and Bobtail going up and down. 
And then I was recommended to the place as a man who could 
give another man as good as he brought, and I took it. It's easier 
than bellowsing and hammering. — That's loaded, that is." 

My eye had been caught by a gun with a brass-bound stock over 
the chimney-piece, and his eye had followed mine. 

"Well," said I, not desirous of more conversation, "shall I go 
up to Miss Havisham 1 " 

" Burn me, if I know ! " he retorted, first stretching himself and 
then shaking himself; "my orders ends here, young master. I 
give this here bell a rap with this here hammer, and you go on 
along the passage till you meet somebody." 

"I am expected, I believe 1 " 

" Burn me twice over, if I can say ! " said he. 

Upon that I turned down the long passage which I had first 
trodden in my thick boots, and he made his bell sound. At the 
end of the passage, while the bell was still reverberating, I found 
Sarah Pocket : who appeared to have now become constitutionally 
green and yellow by reason of me. 

" Oh ! " said she. " You, is it, Mr. Pip ? " 

" It is, Miss Pocket. I am glad to tell you that Mr. Pocket 
and family are all well." 

"Are they any wiser?" said Sarah, ^ith a dismal shake of 
■the head ; " they had better be wiser than well. Ah, Matthew, 
Matthew ! You know your way, sir 1 " 

Tolerably, for I had gone up the staircase in the dark, many a 
time. I ascended it now, in lighter boots than of yore, and tapped 



200 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

in my old way at the door of Miss Havisham's room. ''Pip's 
rap," I heard her say, immediately; "come in, Pip." 

She was in her chair near the old table, in the old dress, with 
her two hands crossed on her stick, her chin resting on them, and 
her eyes on the fire. Sitting near her, with the white shoe, that 
had never been worn, in her hand, and her head bent as she looked 
at it, was an elegant lady whom I had never seen. 

"Come in, Pip," Miss Havisham continued to mutter, without 
looking round or up ; " come in, Pip ; how do you do, Pip ? so you 
kiss my hand as if I were a queen, eh ? Well ? " 

She looked up at me suddenly, only moving her eyes, and 
repeated in a grimly playful manner, 

"Well?" 

"I heard. Miss Havisham," said I, rather at a loss, "that you 
were so kind as to wish me to come and see you, and I came 
directly." 

"WeU?". 

The lady whom I had never seen before, lifted up her eyes and 
looked archly at me, and then I saw that the eyes were Estella's 
eyes. But she was so much changed, was so much more beautiful, 
so much more womanly, in all things winning admiration had made 
such wonderful advance, that I seemed to have made none. I 
fancied, as I looked at her, that I slipped hopelessly back into the 
coarse and common boy again. the sense of distance and dispar- 
ity that came upon me, and the inaccessibility that came about 
her ! 

She gave me her hand. I stammered something about the 
pleasure I felt in seeing her again, and about my having looked 
forward to it for a long, long time. 

" Do you find her much changed, Pip ? " asked Miss Havisham, 
with her greedy look, and striking her stick upon a chair that 
stood between them, as a sign to me to sit down there. 

" When I came in. Miss Havisham, I thought there was nothing 
of Estella in the face or figure ; but now it all settles down so 
curiously into the old " 

"What? You are not going to say into the old Estella?" Miss 
Havisham interrupted. " She was proud and insulting, and you 
wanted to go away from her. Don't you remember ? " 

I said confusedly that that was long ago, and that I knew no 
better then, and the like. Estella smiled with perfect composure, 
and said she had no doubt of my having been quite right, and of 
her having been very disagreeable. 

" Is he changed ? " Miss Havisham asked her. 

"Very much," said Estella, looking at me. 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 201 

" Less coarse and common 1 " said Miss Havisham, playing with 
Estella's hair. 

Estella laughed, and looked at the shoe in her hand, and laughed 
again and looked at me, and put the shoe down. She treated me 
as a boy still, but she lured me on. 

We sat in the dreamy room among the old strange influences 
which had so wrought upon me, and I learnt that she had but just 
come home from France, and that she was going to London. 
Proud and wilful as of old, she had brought those qualities into 
such subjection to her beauty that it was impossible and out of 
nature — or I thought so — to separate them from her beauty. 
Truly it was impossible to dissociate her presence from all those 
wretched hankerings after money and gentility that had disturbed 
my boyhood — from all those ill-regulated aspirations that had first 
made me ashamed of home and Joe — from all those visions that 
had raised her face in the glowing fire, struck it out of the iron on 
the anvil, extracted it from the darkness of night to look in at the 
wooden window of the forge and flit away. In a word, it was 
impossible for me to separate her, in the past or in the present, 
from the innermost life of my life. 

It was settled that I should stay there all the rest of the day, 
and return to the hotel at night, and to London to-morrow. When 
we had conversed for a while, Miss Havisham sent us two out to 
walk in the neglected garden : on our coming in by-and-bye, she 
said I should wheel her about a little, as in times of yore. 

So, Estella and I went out into the garden by the gate through 
which I had strayed to my encounter with the pale young gentle- 
man, now Herbert; I, trembling in spirit and worshipping the 
very hem of her dress ; she, quite composed and most decidedly not 
worshipping the hem of mine. As we drew near to the place of 
encounter, she stopped, and said : 

"I must have been a singular little creature to hide and see that 
fight that day : but I did, and I enjoyed it very much." 

"You rewarded me very much." 

"Did I?" she replied, in an incidental and forgetful way. "I 
remember I entertained a great objection to your adversary, because 
I took it ill that he should be brought here to pester me with his 
company." 

" He and I are great friends now." 

"Are you? I think I recollect though, that you read with his 
father?" 

"Yes." 

I made the admission with reluctance, for it seemed to have a 
boyish look, and she already treated me more than enough like a 
boy. 



202 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

" Since your change of fortune and prospects, you have changed 
your companions," said Estella. 

"Naturally," said I. 

"And necessarily," she added, in a haughty tone ; "what was 
fit company for you once, would be quite unfit company for you 
now." 

In my conscience, I doubt very much whether I had any linger- 
ing intention left of going to see Joe ; but if I had, this observation 
put it to flight. 

"You had no idea of your impending good fortune, in those 
times?" said Estella, with a slight wave of her hand, signifying 
the fighting times. 

"Not the least." 

The air of completeness and superiority with which she walked 
at my side, and the air of youthfulness and submission with which 
I walked at hers, made a contrast that I strongly felt. It would 
have rankled in me more than it did, if I had not regarded myself 
as eliciting it by being so set apart for her and assigned to her. 

The garden was too overgrown and rank for walking in with 
ease, and after we had made the round of it twice or thrice, we 
came out again into the brewery yard. I showed her to a nicety 
where I had seen her walking on the casks, that first old day, and 
she said with a cold and careless look in that direction, "Did I?" 
I reminded her where she had come out of the house and given me 
my meat and drink, and she said, " I don't remember." " Not 
remember that you made me cry?" said I. "No," said she, and 
shook her head and looked about her. I verily believe that her 
not remembering and not minding in the least, made me ciy again, 
inwardly — and that is the sharpest crying of all. 

"You must know," said Estella, condescending to me as a brill- 
iant and beautiful woman might, " that I have no heart — if that 
has anything to do with my memory." 

I got through some jargon to the efiect that I took the liberty 
of doubting that. That I knew better. That there could be no 
such beauty without it. 

" Oh ! I have a heart to be stabbed in or shot in, I have no 
doubt," said Estella, "and, of course, if it ceased to beat I should 
cease to be. But you know what I mean. I have no softness 
there, no — sympathy — sentiment — nonsense." 

What was it that was borne in upon my mind when she stood 
still and looked attentively at me ? Anything that I had seen in 
Miss Havisham ? No. In some of her looks and gestures there 
was that tinge of resemblance to Miss Havisham which may often 
be noticed to have been acquired by children, from grown persons 



GKEAT EXPECTATIONS. 203 

with whom tliey have been much associated and seckided, and 
which, when childhood is past, will produce a remarkable occa- 
sional likeness of expression between faces that are otherwise quite 
different. And yet I could not trace this to Miss Havisham. I 
looked again, and though she was still looking at me, the sugges- 
tion was gone. 

What ivas it 1 

"I am serious," said Estella, not so much with a frown (for her 
brow was smooth) as with a darkening of her face; "if we are to 
be thrown much together, you had better believe it at once. No ! " 
imperiously stopping me as I opened my lips. " I have not 
bestowed my tenderness anywhere. I have never had any such 
thing." 

In another moment we were in the brewery so long disused, and 
she pointed to the high gallery where I had seen her going out on 
that same first day, and told me she remembered to have been up 
there, and to have seen me standing scared below. As my eyes 
followed her white hand, again the same dim suggestion that I 
could not possibly grasp, crossed me. My involuntary start occa- 
sioned her to lay her hand upon my arm. Instantly the ghost 
passed once more and was gone. 

What ivas it ? 

"What is the matter ? " asked Estella. "Are you scared again 1 " 

" I should be if I believed what you said just now," I replied, to 
turn it off. 

" Then you don't ? Very well. It is said, at any rate. Miss 
Havisham will soon be expecting you at your old post, though I 
think that might be laid aside now, with other old belongings. 
Let us make one more round of the garden, and then go in. 
Come ! You shall not shed tears for my cruelty to-day ; you shall 
be my Page, and give me your shoulder." 

Her handsome dress had trailed upon the ground. She held it 
in one hand now, and with the other lightly touched my shoulder 
as we walked. 

We walked round the ruined garden twice or thrice more, and it 
was all in bloom for me. If the green and yellow growth of weed 
in the chinks of the old wall had been the most precious flowers 
that ever blew, it could not have been more cherished in my 
remembrance. 

There was no discrepancy of years between us, to remove her 
far from me ; we were of nearly the same age, though of course the 
age told for more in her case than in mine ; but the air of inacces- 
sibility which her beauty and her manner gave her, tormented me 
in the midst of my delight, and at the height of the assurance I 



204 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

felt that our patroness had chosen us for one another. Wretched 
boy! 

At last we went back into the house, and there I heard, with 
surprise, that my guardian had come down to see Miss Havisham 
on business, and would come back to dinner. The old wintry 
branches of chandeliers in the room where the mouldering table 
was spread, had been lighted while we were out, and Miss Havis- 
ham was in her chair and waiting for me. 

It was like pushing the chair itself back into the past, when we 
began the old slow circuit round about the ashes of the bridal feast. 
But, in the funereal room, with that figure of the grave fallen back 
in the chair fbiing its eyes upon her, Estella looked more bright and 
beautiful than before, and I was under stronger enchantment. 

The time so melted away, that our early dinner-hour drew close 
at hand, and Estella left us to prepare herself We had stopped 
near the centre of the long table, and Miss Havisham, with one of 
her withered arms stretched out of the chair, rested that clenched 
hand upon the yellow cloth. As Estella looked back over her 
shoulder before going out at the door, Miss Havisham kissed that 
hand to her, with a ravenous intensity that was of its kind quite 
dreadful. 

Then, Estella being gone and we two left alone, she turned to 
me and said in a whisper : 

"Is she beautiful, graceful, well-grown? Do you admire her?" 

"Everybody must who sees her. Miss Havisham." 

She drew an arm round my neck, and drew my head close down 
to hers as she sat in the chair. " Love her, love her, love her ! 
How does she use you ? " 

Before I could answer (if I could have answered so difficult a 
question at all), she repeated, " Love her, love her, love her ! If 
she favours you, love her. If she wounds you, love her. If she 
tears your heart to pieces — and as it gets older and stronger it 
will tear deeper — love her, love her, love her ! " 

Never had I seen such passionate eagerness as was joined to her 
utterance of these words. I could feel the muscles of the thin arm 
round my neck, swell with the vehemence that possessed her. 

" Hear me, Pip ! I adopted her to be loved. I bred her and 
educated her, to be loved. I developed her into what she is, 
that she might be loved. Love her ! " 

She said the word often enough, and there could be no doubt 
that she meant to say it ; but if the often repeated word had been 
hate instead of love — despair — revenge — dire death — it could 
not have sounded from her lips more like a curse. 

" I'll tell you," said she, in the same hurried passionate whisper, 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 205 

"what real love is. It is blind devotion, unquestioning self- 
humiliation, utter submission, trust and belief against yourself and 
against the whole world, giving up your whole heart and soul to 
the smiter — as I did ! " 

When she came to that, and to a wild cry that followed that, I 
caught her round the waist. For she rose up in the chair, in her 
shroud of a dress, and struck at the air as if she would as soon 
have struck herself against the wall and fallen dead. 

All this passed in a few seconds. As I drew her down into her 
chair, I was conscious of a scent that I knew, and turning, saw my 
guardian in the room. 

He always carried (I have not yet mentioned it, I think) a 
pocket-handkerchief of rich silk and of imposing proportions, which 
was of great value to him in his profession. I have seen him so 
terrify a client or a witness by ceremoniously unfolding this pocket- 
handkerchief as if he were immediately going to blow his nose, and 
then pausing, as if he knew he should not have time to do it, 
before such client or witness committed himself, that the self-com- 
mittal has followed directly, quite as a matter of course. When I 
saw him in the room he had this expressive pocket-handkerchief 
in both hands, and was looking at us. On meeting my eye, he 
said plainly, by a momentary and silent pause in that attitude, 
"Indeed? Singular ! " and then put the handkerchief to its right 
use with wonderful effect. 

Miss Havisham had seen him as soon as I, and was (like every- 
body else) afraid of him. She made a strong attempt to compose 
herself, and stammered that he was as punctual as ever. 

"As punctual as ever," he repeated, coming up to us. "(How 
do you do, Pip 1 Shall I give you a ride. Miss Havisham ? Once 
round ?) And so you are here, Pip ? " 

I told him when I had arrived, and how Miss Havisham wished 
me to come and see Estella. To which he replied, " Ah ! Very 
fine young lady ! " Then he pushed Miss Havisham in her chair 
before him, with one of his large hands, and put the other in his 
trousers-pocket as if the pocket were full of secrets. 

"Well, Pip ! How often have you seen Miss Estella before?" 
said he, when he came to a stop. 

" How often ? " 

" Ah ! How many times 1 Ten thousand times 1 " 

" Oh ! Certainly not so many. " 

" Twice ? " 

" Jaggers," interposed Miss Havisham, much to my relief; "leave 
my Pip alone, and go with him to your dinner." 

He complied, and we groped our way down the dark stairs 



206 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

together. While we were still on our way to those detached apart- 
ments across the paved yard at the back, he asked me how often I 
had seen Miss Havisham eat and drink ; offering me a breadth of 
choice, as usual, between a hundred times and once. 

I considered, and said, "Never." 

"And never will, Pip," he retorted, with a frowning smile. 
" She has never allowed herself to be seen doing either, since she 
lived this present life of hers. She wanders about in the night, 
and then lays hands on such food as she takes." 

"Pray, sir," said I, "may I ask you a question?" 

"You may," said he, "and I may decline to answer it. Put 
your question." 

" Estella's name, is it Havisham or ? " I had nothing to 

add. 

" Or what ? " said he. 

" Is it Havisham ? " 

"It is Havisham." 

This brought us to the dinner-table, where she and Sarah Pocket 
awaited us. Mr. Jaggers presided, Estella sat opposite to him, 
I faced my green and yellow friend. We dined very well, and 
were waited on by a maid-servant whom I had never seen in ail 
my comings and goings, but who, for anything I know, had been 
in that mysterious house the whole time. After dinner a bottle of 
choice old port was placed before my guardian (he was evidently 
well acquainted with the vintage), and the two ladies left us. 

Anything to equal the determined reticence of Mr. Jaggers 
under that roof I never saw elsewhere, even in him. He kept his 
very looks to himself, and scarcely directed his eyes to Estella's face 
once during dinner. When she spoke to him, he listened, and in 
due course, answered, but never looked at her that I could see. 
On the other hand, she often looked at him, with interest and curi- 
osity, if not distrust, but his face never showed the least conscious- 
ness. Throughout dinner he took a dry delight in making Sarah 
Pocket greener and yellower, by often referring in conversation 
with me to my expectations : but here, again, he showed no con- 
sciousness, and even made it appear that he extorted — and even 
did extort, though I don't know how — those referencees out of 
my innocent self. 

And when he and I were left alone together, he sat with an air 
upon him of general lying by in consequence of information he 
possessed, that really was too much for me. He cross-examined 
his very wine when he had nothing else in hand. He held it 
between himself and the candle, tasted the port, rolled it in his 
mouth, swallowed it, looked at his glass again, smelt the port, 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 207 

tried it, drank it, filled again, and cross-examined the glass again, 
until I was as nervous as if I had known the wine to be telling him 
something to my disadvantage. Three or four times I feebly 
thought I would start conversation; but whenever he saw me 
going to ask him anything, he looked at me with his glass in his 
hand, and rolling his wine about in his mouth, as if requesting 
me to take notice that it was of no use, for he couldn't answer. 

I think Miss Pocket was conscious that the sight of me involved 
her in the danger of being goaded to madness, and perhaps tear- 
ing oft' her cap — which was a very hideous one, in the nature of a 
muslin mop — and strewing the ground with her hair — which 
assuredly had never grown on her head. She did not appear when 
we afterwards went up to Miss Havisham's room, and we four 
played "at whist. In the interval. Miss Havisham, in a fantastic 
way, had put some of the most beautiful jewels from her dressing- 
table into Estella's hair, and about her bosom and arms ; and I saw 
even my guardian look at her from under his thick eyebrows, and 
raise them a little when her loveliness was before him, with those 
rich flushes of glitter and colour in it. 

Of the manner and extent to which he took our trumps into 
custody, and came out with mean little cards at the ends of hands, 
before which the glory of our Kings and Queens was utterly abased, 
I say nothing ; nor, of the feelivig that I had, respecting his looking 
upon us personally in the light of three very obvious and poor 
riddles that he had found out long ago. What I sufiered from, 
was the incompatibility between his cold presence and my feelings 
towards Estella. It was not that I knew I could never bear to 
speak to him about her, that I knew I could never bear to hear 
him creak his boots at her, that I knew I could never bear to see 
him wash his hands of her ; it was, that my admiration should be 
within a foot or two of him — it was, that my feelings should be in 
the same place with him — that, was the agonising circumstance. 

We played until nine o'clock, and then it was arranged that 
when Estella came to London I should be forewarned of her com- 
ing and should meet her at the coach ; and then I took leave of 
her, and touched her and left her. 

My guardian lay at the Boar in the next room to mine. Far 
into the night. Miss Havisham's words, " Love her, love her, love 
her ! " sounded in my ears. I adapted them for my own repetition, 
and said to my pillow, " I love her, I love her, I love her ! " hun- 
dreds of times. Then, a burst of gratitude came upon me, that she 
should be destined for me, once the blacksmith's boy. Then, I 
thought if she were, as I feared, by no means rapturously grateful 
for that destiny yet, when would she begin to be interested in me ? 




A RUBBER AT MISS HAVISHAM'S. 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 209 

When should I awaken the heart within her, that was mute and 
sleeping now? 

Ah me ! I thought those were high and great emotions. But 
I never thought there was anything low and small in my keeping 
away from Joe, because I knew she would be contemptuous of him. 
It was but a day gone, and Joe had brought the tears into my 
eyes ; they had soon dried, God forgive me ! soon dried. 



CHAPTER XXX. 

After well considering the matter while I was dressing at the 
Blue Boar in the morning, I resolved to tell my guardian that I 
doubted Orlick's being the right sort of man to fill a post of trust 
at Miss Havisham's. "Why, of course he is not the right sort 
of man, Pip," said my guardian, comfortably satisfied beforehand 
on the general head, " because the man who fills the post of trust 
never is the right sort of man." It seemed quite to put him in 
spirits, to find that this particular post was not exceptionally held 
by the right sort of man, and he listened in a satisfied manner 
while I told him what knowledge I had of Orhck. "Very good, 
Pip," he observed, when I concluded, "I'll go round presently, and 
pay our friend off." Rather alarmed by this summary action, 
I was for a little delay, and even hinted that our friend himself 
might be difficult to deal with. " Oh no, he won't," said my 
guardian, making his pocket-handkerchief-point, with perfect con- 
fidence ; " I should like to see him argue the question with me." 

As we were going back together to London by the mid-day coach, 
and as I breakfasted under such terrors of Pumblechook that I 
could scarcely hold my cup, this gave me an opportunity of saying 
that I wanted a walk, and that I would go on along the London- 
road while Mr. Jaggers was occupied, if he would let the coachman 
know that I w^ould get into my place when overtaken. I was thus 
enabled to fly from the Blue Boar immediately after breakfast. By 
then making a loop of about a couple of miles into the open 
country at the back of Pumblechook's premises, I got round 
into High-street again, a little beyond that pitfall, and felt my- 
self in comparative security. 

It was interesting to be in the quiet old town once more, and it 
was not disagreeable to be here and there suddenly recognised and 
stared after. One or two of the tradespeople even darted out of 
their shops, and went a little way down the street before me, that 
they might turn, as if they had forgotten something, and pass me 



1 



210 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

face to face — on which occasion I don't know whether they or I 
made the worst pretence ; they of not doing it, or I of not seeing 
it. Still my position was a distinguished one, and I was not at 
all dissatisfied with it, until Fate threw me in the way of that 
unlimited miscreant, Trabb's boy. 

Casting my eyes along the street at a certain point of my prog- 
ress, I beheld Trabb's boy approaching, lashing himself with an 
empty blue bag. Deeming that a serene and unconscious contem- 
plation of him would best beseem me, and would be most likely to 
quell his evil mind, I advanced with that expression of counte- 
nance, and was rather congratulating myself on my success, when 
suddenly the knees of Trabb's boy smote together, his hair uprose, 
his cap fell off, he trembled violently in every limb, staggered out 
into the road, and crying to the populace, " Hold me ! I'm so 
frightened ! " feigned to be in a paroxysm of terror and contrition, 
occasioned by the dignity of my appearance. As I passed him, 
his teeth loudly chattered in his head, and with every mark of 
extreme humiliation, he prostrated himself in the dust. 

This was a hard thing to bear, but this was nothing. I had 
not advanced another two hundred yards, when, to my inexpressi- 
ble terror, amazement, and indignation, I again beheld Trabb's 
boy approaching. He was coming round a narrow corner. His 
blue bag was slung over his shoulder, honest industry beamed in 
his eyes, a determination to proceed to Trabb's with cheerful brisk- 
ness was indicated in his gait. With a shock he became aware of 
me, and was severely visited as before ; but this time his motion 
was rotatory, and he staggered round and round me with knees 
more afflicted, and with uplifted hands as if beseeching for mercy. 
His sufferings were hailed with the greatest joy by a knot of 
spectators, and I felt utterly confounded. 

I had not got as much further down the street as the post- 
office, when I again beheld Trabb's boy shooting round by a back 
way. This time he was entirely changed. He wore the blue bag 
in the manner of my great-coat, and was strutting along the pavement 
towards me on the opposite side of the street, attended by a company 
of delighted young friends to whom he from time to time ex- 
claimed, with a wave of his hand, "Don't know yah!" Words 
cannot state the amount of aggravation and injury wreaked uponj 
me by Trabb's boy, when, passing abreast of me, he pulled up his 
shirt collar, twined his side-hair, stuck an arm akimbo, and smirked 
extravagantly by, wriggling his elbows and body, and drawling to 
his attendants, "Don't know yah, don't know yah, pon my souli 
don't know yah ! " The disgrace attendant on his immediately] 
afterwards taking to crowing and pursuing me across the bridge] 



212 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

with crows, as from an exceedingly dejected fowl who had known 
me when I was a blacksmith, culminated the disgrace with which 
I left the town, and was, so to speak, ejected by it into the open 
country. 

But unless I had taken the life of Trabb's boy on that occasion, 
I really do not even now see what I could have done save endure. 
To have struggled with him in the street, or to have exacted any 
lower recompense from him than his heart's best blood, would have 
been futile and degrading. Moreover, he was a boy whom no man 
could hurt ; an invulnerable and dodging serpent who, when chased 
into a corner, flew out again between his captor's legs, scornfully 
yelping. I wrote, however, to Mr. Trabb by next day's post, to 
say that Mr. Pip must decline to deal further with one who could 
so far forget what he owed to the best interests of society, as to 
employ a boy who excited Loathing in every respectable mind. 

The coach, with Mr. Jaggers inside, came up in due time, and I 
took my box-seat again, and arrived in London safe — but not 
sound, for my heart was gone. As soon as I arrived, I sent a 
penitential codfish and a barrel of oysters to Joe (as reparation 
for not having gone myself), and then went on to Barnard's Inn. 

I found Herbert dining on cold meat, and delighted to welcome 
me back. Having despatched the Avenger to the coffee-house for 
an addition to the dinner, I felt that I must open my breast that 
very evening to my friend and chum. As confidence was out of 
the question with the Avenger in the hall, which could merely 
be regarded in the light of an ante-chamber to the keyhole, I 
sent him to the Play. A better proof of the severity of my bond- 
age to that taskmaster could scarcely be afforded, than the degrad- 
ing shifts to which I was constantly driven to find him employment. 
So mean is extremity, that I sometimes sent him to Hyde Park 
Corner to see what o'clock it was. 

Dinner done and we sitting with our feet upon the fender, I said 
to Herbert, "My dear Herbert, I have something very particular ■ 
to tell you." ■ 

"My dear Handel," he returned, "I shall esteem and respect 
your confidence." 

"It concerns myself, Herbert," said I, "and one other person." 

Herbert crossed his feet, looked at the fire with his head on one 
side, and having looked at it in vain for some time, looked at me 
because I didn't go on. 

"Herbert," said I, laying my hand upon his knee, "I love — I 
adore — Estella." 

Instead of being transfixed, Herbert replied in an easy matter-of- 
course way^ " Exactly. Well ? " 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 213 

" Well, Herbert. Is that all you say ? WeU ? " 

" What next, I mean 1 " said Herbert. " Of course I kuow that" 

" How do you know it ? " said I. 

"How do I know it, Handel? Why, from you." 

" I never told you." 

" Told me ! You have never told me when you have got your 
hair cut, but I have had senses to perceive it. You have always 
adored her, ever since I have known you. You brought your adora- 
tion and your portmanteau here, together. Told me ! Why, you 
have always told me all day long. When you told me your own 
story, you told me plainly that you began adoring her the fii'st time 
you saw her, when you were very young indeed." 

"Very well, then," said I, to whom this was a new and not 
unwelcome light, " I have never left off adoring her. And she has 
come back, a most beautiful and most elegant creature. And I saw 
her yesterday. And if I adored her before, I now doubly adore her." 

" Lucky for you then, Handel," said Herbert, " that you are picked 
out for her and allotted to her. Without encroaching on forbidden 
ground, we may venture to say, that there can be no doubt between 
ourselves of that fact. Have you any idea yet, of Estella's views 
on the adoration question? " 

I shook my head gloomily. "Oh! She is thousands of miles 
away, from me," said I. 

" Patience, my dear Handel : time enough, time enough. But 
you have something more to say ? " 

"I am ashamed to say it," I returned, "and yet it's no worse to 
say it than to think it. You call me a lucky fellow. Of course, I 
am. I was a blacksmith's boy but yesterday; I am — what shall 
I say I am — to-day ? " 

" Say, a good fellow, if you want a phrase," returned Herbert, 
smiling, and clapping his hand on the back of mine: "a good 
fellow, with impetuosity and hesitation, boldness and diffidence, 
action and dreaming, curiously mixed in him." 

I stopped for a moment to consider whether there really was this 
mixture in my character. On the whole, I by no means recognised 
the analysis, but thought it not worth disputing. 

" When I ask what I am to call myself to-day, Herbert," I went 
on, "I suggest what I have in my thoughts. You say I am lucky. 
I know I have done nothing to raise myself in life, and that 
Fortune alone has raised me; that is being very lucky. And yet, 
when I think of Estella " 

("And when don't you, you know!" Herbert threw in, with his 
eyes on the fire ; which I thought kind and sympathetic of him.) 

" — Then, my dear Herbert, I cannot tell you how dependent and 



214 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

uncertain I feel, and how exposed to hundreds of chances. Avoid- 
ing forbidden ground, as you did just now, I may still say that on 
the constancy of one person (naming no person) all my expectations 
depend. And at the best, how indefinite and unsatisfactory, only 
to know so vaguely what they are ! " In saying this, I relieved my 
mind of what had always been there, more or less, though no doubt 
most since yesterday. 

"Now, Handel," Herbert replied, in his gay hopeful way, "it 
seems to me that in the despondency of the tender passion, we are 
looking into our gift-horse's mouth with a magnifying-glass. Like- 
wise, it seems to me that, concentrating our attention on the exam- 
ination, we altogether overlook one of the best points of the animal. 
Didn't you tell me that your guardian, Mr. Jaggers, told you in 
the beginning, that you were not endowed with expectations only ? 
And even if he had not told you so — though that is a very large If, 
I grant — could you believe that of all men in London, Mr. Jaggers 
is the man to hold his present relations towards you unless he were 
sure of his ground ? " 

I said I could not deny that this was a strong point. I said it 
(people often do so in such cases) like a rather reluctant concession 
to truth and justice ; — as if I wanted to deny it ! 

"I should think it ivcu a strong point," said Herbert, "and I 
should think you would be puzzled to imagine a stronger ; as to the 
rest, you must bide your guardian's time, and he must bide his 
client's time. You'll be one-and-twenty before you know where 
you are, and then perhaps you'll get some further enlightenment. 
At all events, you'll be nearer getting it, for it must come at last." 

" What a hopeful disposition you have ! " said I, gratefully admir- 
ing his cheery ways. 

"I ought to have," said Herbert, "for I have not much -else. I 
must acknowledge, by-the-bye, that the good sense of what I have 
just said is not my own, but my father's. The only remark I ever 
heard him make on your story, was the final one : * The thing is 
settled and done, or Mr. Jaggers would not be in it.' And now, 
before I say anything more about my father, or my father's son, 
and repay confidence with confidence, I want to make myself seri- 
ously disagreeable to you for a moment — positively repulsive." 

"You won't succeed," said I. 

"Oh yes I shall!" said he. "One, two, three, and now I am 
in for it. Handel, my good fellow : " though he spoke in this light 
tone, he was very much in earnest : "I have been thinking since 
we have been talking with our feet on this fender, that Estella 
cannot surely be a condition of your inheritance, if she was never 
referred to by your guardian. Am I right in so understanding 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 215 

what you have told me, as that he never referred to her, directly or 
indirectly, in any way? Never even hinted, for instance, that 
your patron might have views as to your marriage ultimately 1 " 

"Never." 

" Now, Handel, I am quite free from the flavour of sour grapes, 
upon my soul and honour ! Not being bound to her, can you not 
detach yourself from her? — I told you I should be disagreeable." 

I turned my head aside, for, with a rush and a sweep, like the 
old marsh winds coming up from the sea, a feeling like that which 
had subdued me on the morning when I left the forge, when the 
mists were solemnly rising, and when I laid my hand upon the 
village finger-post, smote upon my heart again. There was silence 
between us for a little while. 

"Yes; but my dear Handel," Herbert went on, as if we had 
been talking instead of silent, " its having been so strongly rooted 
in the breast of a boy whom nature and circumstances made so 
romantic, renders it very serious. Think of her bringing-up, and 
think of Miss Havisham. Think of what she is herself (now I am 
repulsive and you abominate me). This may lead to miserable 
things." 

"I know it, Herbert," said I, with my head still turned away, 
"but I can't help it." 

"You can't detach yourself?" 

" No. Impossible ! " 

"You can't try, Handel?" 

"No. Impossible!" 

" Well ! " said Herbert, getting up with a lively shake as if he 
had been asleep, and stirring the fire; "now I'll endeavour to 
make myself agreeable again ! " 

So, he went round the room and shook the curtains out, put the 
chairs in their places, tidied the books and so forth that were lying 
about, looked into the hall, peeped into the letter-box, shut the 
door, and came back to his chair by the fire ; when he sat down, 
nursing his left leg in both arms. 

"I was going to say a word or two, Handel, concerning my 
father and my father's son. I am afraid it is scarcely necessary 
for my father's son to remark that my father's establishment is not 
particularly brilliant in its housekeeping." 

"There is always plenty, Herbert," said I, to say something 
encouraging. 

" Oh yes ! and so the dustman says, I believe, with the strong- 
est approval, and so does the marine-store shop in the back street. 
Gravely, Handel, for the subject is grave enough, you know how 
it is, as well as I do. I suppose there was a time once, when my 



216 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

father had not given matters up ; but if ever there was, the time 
is gone. May I ask you if you have ever had an opportunity of 
remarking, down in your part of the country, that the children of 
not exactly suitable marriages, are always most particularly anxious 
to be married ? " 

This was such a singular question, that I asked him, in return, 
"Is it so?" 

"I don't know," said Herbert; "that's what I want to know. 
Because it is decidedly the case with us. My poor sister Charlotte, 
who was next me and died before she was fourteen, was a striking 
example. Little Jane is the same. In her desire to be matrimo- 
nially established, you might suppose her to have passed her short 
existence in the perpetual contemplation of domestic bliss. Little 
Alick in a frock has already made arrangements for his union with 
a suitable young person at Kew. And, indeed, I think we are all 
engaged, except the baby." 

" Then you are ? " said I. 

"I am," said Herbert; "but it's a secret." 

I assured him of my keeping the secret, and begged to be 
favoured with further particulars. He had spoken so sensibly and 
feelingly of my weakness, that I wanted to know something about 
his strength. 

" May I ask the name 1 " I said. 

"Name of Clara," said Herbert. 

" Live in London ? " 

"Yes. Perhaps I ought to mention," said Herbert, who had 
become curiously crestfallen and meek, since we entered on the 
interesting theme, " that she is rather below my mother's nonsen- 
sical ftimily notions. Her father had to do with the victualling of 
passenger-ships. I think he was a species of purser." 

"What is he now?" said L 

"He's an invalid now," replied Herbert. 

"Living on ?" 

" On the first floor," said Herbert. Which was not at all what 
I meant, for I had intended my question to apply to his means. 
" I have never seen him, for he has always kept his room overhead, 
since I have known Clara. But I have heard him constantly. 
He makes tremendous rows — roars, and pegs at the floor with 
some frightful instrument." In looking at me and then laughing 
heartily, Herbert for the time recovered his usual lively manner. 

" Don't you expect to see him 1 " said I. 

"Oh yes, I constantly expect to see him," returned Herbert, 
" because I never hear him, without expecting him to come tum- 
bling through the ceiling. But I don't know how long the rafters 
may hold." 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 217 

When he had once more laughed heartily, he became meek again, 
and told me that the moment he began to realise Capital, it was 
his intention to many this young lady. He added as a self-evident 
proposition, engendering low spirits, " But you can't marry, you 
know, while you're looking about you." 

As we contemplated the fire, and as I thought what a difficult 
vision to realise this same Capital sometimes was, I put my hands 
in my pockets. A folded piece of paper in one of them attracting 
my attention, I opened it and found it to be the playbill I had 
received from Joe, relative to the celebrated provincial amateur of 
Roscian renown. "And bless my heart," I involuntarily added 
aloud, "it's to-night!" 

This changed the subject in an instant, and made us hurriedly 
resolve to go to the play. So, when I had pledged myself to com- 
fort and abet Herbert in the affair of his heart by all practicable 
and impracticable means, and when Herbert had told me that his 
affianced already knew me by reputation, and that I should be pre- 
sented to her, and when we had warmly shaken hands upon our 
mutual confidence, we blew out our candles, made up our fire, 
locked our door, and issued forth in quest of Mr. Wopsle and 
Denmark. 



CHAPTER XXXI. 

On our arrival in Denmark, we foimd the king and queen of that 
country elevated in two arm-chairs on a kitchen-table, holding a 
Court. The whole of the Danish nobility were in attendance ; 
consisting of a noble boy in the wash-leather boots of a gigantic 
ancestor, a venerable Peer Avith a dirty face, who seemed to have 
risen from the people late in life, and the Danish chivalry with a 
comb in its hair and a pair of white silk legs, and presenting on 
the whole a feminine appearance. My gifted townsman stood 
gloomily apart, with folded arms, and I could have wished that 
his curls and forehead had been more probable. 

Several curious little circumstances transpired as the action pro- 
ceeded. The late king of the country not only appeared to have 
been troubled with a cough at the time of his decease, but to have 
taken it with him to the tomb, and to have brought it back. The 
royal phantom also carried a ghostly manuscript round its tnm- 
cheon, to which it had the appearance of occasionally referring, 
and that, too, with an air of anxiety and a tendency to lose the 
place of reference which were suggestive of a state of mortality. 



218 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

It was this, I conceive, which led to the Shade's being advised by 
the gallery to "turn over!" — a recommendation which it took 
extremely ill. It was likewise to be noted of this majestic spirit 
that whereas it always appeared with an air of having been out a 
long time and walked an immense distance, it perceptibly came 
from a closely-contiguous wall. This occasioned its terrors to be 
received derisively. The Queen of Denmark, a very buxom lady, 
though no doubt historically brazen, was considered by the public 
to have too much brass about her; her chin being attached to 
her diadem by a broad band of that metal (as if she had a gorgeous 
toothache), her waist being encircled by another, and each of her 
arms by another, so that she was openly mentioned as " the kettle- 
drum." The noble boy in the ancestral boots, was inconsistent; 
representing himself, as it were in one breath, as an able seaman, 
a strolling actor, a gravedigger, a clergyman, and a person of the 
utmost importance at a Court fencing-match, on the authority of 
whose practised eye and nice discrimination the finest strokes were 
judged. This gradually led to a want of toleration for him, and 
even — on his being detected in holy orders, and declining to per- 
form the funeral service — to the general indignation taking the 
form of nuts. Lastly, Ophelia was a prey to such slow musical 
madness, that when, in course of time, she had taken off her white 
muslin scarf, folded it up, and buried it, a sulky man who had 
been long cooling his impatient nose against an iron bar in the 
front row of the gallery, growled, " Now the baby's put to bed, 
let's have supper ! " Which, to say the least of it, was out of 
keeping. 

Upon my unfortunate townsman all these incidents accumulated 
with playful effect. AVhenever that undecided Prince had to ask 
a question or state a doubt, the public helped him out with it. 
As for example; on the question whether 'twas nobler in the 
mind to suffer, some roared yes, and some no, and some inclining 
to both opinions said "toss up for it;" and quite a Debating 
Society arose. When he asked what should such fellows as he 
do crawling between earth and heaven, he was encouraged with 
loud cries of " Hear, hear ! " When he appeared with his stock- 
ing disordered (its disorder expressed, according to usage, by one 
very neat fold in the top, which I suppose to be always got up 
with a flat iron), a conversation took place in the gallery respecting 
the paleness of his leg, and whether it was occasioned by the turn 
the ghost had given him. On his taking the recorders — very 
like a little black flute that had just been played in the orchestra 
and handed out at the door — he was called upon unanimously 
for Rule Britannia. When he recommended the player not to saw 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 219 

the air thus, the sulky uiau said, " And don't you do it, neither ; 
you're a deal worse than him I " And I giieve to add that peals 
of laughter greeted Mr. Wopsle on every one of these occasions. 

But his greatest trials were in the churchyard : which had the 
appearance of a primeval forest, with a kind of small ecclesiastical 
wash-house on one side, and a turnpike gate on the other. Mr. 
Wopsle, in a comprehensive black cloak, being descried entering 
at the turnpike, the gravedigger was admonished in a friendly 
way, "Look out! Here's the undertaker a coming, to see how 
you're getting on with your work ! " I believe it is well kno\vn 
in a constitutional country that Mr. Wopsle could not possibly 
have returned the skull, after moralising over it, without dusting 
his fingers on a white napkin taken from his breast; but even 
that innocent and indispensable action did not pass without the 
comment "Wai-ter !" The arrival of the body for interment (in 
an empty black box with the lid tumbling open), was the signal 
for a general joy which was much enhanced by the discovery, 
among the bearers, of an individual obnoxious to identification. 
The joy attended Mr. Wopsle through his struggle with Laertes 
on the brink of the orchestra and the grave, and slackened no 
more until he had tumbled the king oif the kitchen-table, and had 
died by inches from the ankles upward. 

We had made some pale eff'orts in the beginning to applaud Mr. 
Wopsle ; but they were too hopeless to be persisted in. Therefore 
we had sat, feeling keenly for him, but laughing, nevertheless, 
from ear to ear. I laughed in spite of myself all the time, the 
whole thing was so droll ; and yet I had a latent impression that 
there was something decidedly fine in Mr. Wopsle's elocution — 
not for old associations' sake, I am afraid, but because it was veiy 
slow, very dreary, very up-hill and do^vn-hill, and very unlike any 
way in which any man in any natural circumstances of life or 
death ever expressed himself about anything. When the tragedy 
was over, and he had been called for and hooted, I said to Herbert, 
"Let us go at once, or perhaps we shall meet him." 

We made all the haste we could do^vnstairs, but we were not 
quick enough either. Standing at the door was a Jemsh man 
with an unnatural heavy smear of eyebrow, who caught my eyes 
as we advanced, and said, when we came up with him : 

" Mr. Pip and friend ? " 

Identity of Mr. Pip' and friend confessed. 

" Mr. Waldengarver," said the man, " would be glad to have the 
honour." 

" Waldengarver ? " I repeated — when Herbert murmured in my 
ear, "Probably Wopsle." 



220 GREAT EXrECTATIONS. 

" Oh ! " said I. " Yes. Shall we follow you ? " 

" A few steps, please." When we were in a side alley, he turned 
and asked, "How do you think he looked? — / dressed him." 

I don't know what he had looked like, except a funeral ; with 
the addition of a large Danish sun or star hanging round his neck 
by a blue ribbon, that had given him the appearance of being 
insured in some extraordinary Fire Office. But I said he had 
looked very nice. 

"When he come to the grave," said our conductor, " he showed 
his cloak beautiful. But, judging from the wing, it looked to me 
that when he see the ghost in the queen's apartment, he might 
have made more of his stockings." 

I modestly assented, and we all fell through a little dirty swing 
door, into a sort of hot packing-case immediately behind it. Here 
Mr. Wopsle was divesting himself of his Danish garments, and 
here there was just room for us to look at him over one another's 
shoulders, by keeping the packing-case door, or lid, wide open. 

"Gentlemen," said Mr. Wopsle, "I am proud to see you. I 
hope, Mr. Pip, you will excuse my sending round. I had the 
happiness to know you in former times, and the Drama has ever 
had a claim which has ever been acknowledged, on the noble and 
the affluent." 

Meanwhile, Mr. Waldengarver, in a frightful perspiration, was 
trying to get himself out of his princely sables. 

" Skin the stockings off, Mr. Waldengarver," said the owner of 
that property, " or you'll bust 'em. Bust 'em and you'll bust five- 
and-thirty shillings. Shakspeare never was complimented with a 
finer pair. Keep quiet in your chair now, and leave 'em to me." 

With that, he went upon his knees, and began to flay his victim ; 
who, on the first stocking coming off, would certainly have fallen 
over backward with his chair, but for there being no room to fall 
anyhow. 

I had been afraid until then to say a word about the play. 
But then, Mr. Waldengarver looked up at us complacently, and 
said : 

"Gentlemen, how did it seem to you, to go, in front?" 

Herbert said from behind (at the same time poking me), 
" capitally." So I said " capitally." 

" How did you like my reading of the character, gentlemen ? " 
said Mr. Waldengarver, almost, if not quite, with patronage. 

Herbert said from behind (again poking me), " massive and 
concrete." So I said boldly, as if I had originated it, and must 
beg to insist upon it, " massive and concrete." 

"I am glad to have your approbation, gentlemen," said Mr. 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 221 

Waldengarver, with an air of dignity, in spite of hi.s being ground 
against the wall at the time, and holding on by the seat of the 
chair. 

"But I'll tell you one thing, Mr. Waldengarver," said the man 
who was on his knees, " in which you're out in your reading. 
Now mind ! I don't care who says contrary ; I tell you so. You're 
out in your reading of Hamlet when you get your legs in profile. 
The last Hamlet as I dressed, made the same mistakes in his read- 
ing at rehearsal, till I got him to put a large red wafer on each of 
his shins, and then at that rehearsal (which was the last) I went 
in front, sir, to the back of the pit, and whenever his reading 
brought him into profile, I called out ' I don't see no wafers ! ' 
And at night his reading was lovely." 

Mr. Waldengarver smiled at me, as much as to say " a faithful 
dependent — I overlook his folly;" and then said aloud, "My 
view is a little classic and thoughtful for them here ; but they will 
improve, they will improve." 

Herbert and I said together. Oh, no doubt they would improve. 

"Did you observe, gentlemen," said Mr. Waldengarver, "that 
there was a man in the gallery who endeavoured to cast derision on 
the service — I mean, the representation 1 " 

We basely replied that we rather thought we had noticed such a 
man. I added, "He was drunk, no doubt." 

"Oh dear no, sir," said Mr. Wopsle, "not drunk. His employer 
would see to that, sir. His employer would not allow him to be 
drunk." 

" You know his employer ? " said I. 

Mr. Wopsle shut his eyes, and opened them again; performing 
both ceremonies very slowly. "You must have observed, gentle- 
men," said he, "an ignorant and a blatant ass, with a rasping 
throat and a countenance expressive of low malignity, who went 
through — I will not say sustained — the role (if I may use a 
French expression) of Claudius King of Denmark. That is his 
employer, gentlemen. Such is the profession ! " 

Without distinctly knowing whether I should have been more 
sorry for Mr. Wopsle if he had been in despair, I was so sorry for 
him as it was, that I took the opportunity of his turning round to 
have his braces put on — which jostled us out at the doorway — 
to ask Herbert what he thought of having him home to supper ? 
Herbert said he thought it would be kind to do so; therefore I 
invited him, and he went to Barnard's with us, wTapped up to the 
eyes, and we did our best for him, and he sat until two o'clock in 
the morning, reviewing his success and developing his plans. I 
forget in detail what they were, but I have a general recollection 



222 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

that he was to begin with reviving the Drama, and to end with 
crushing it ; inasmuch as his decease would leave it utterly bereft 
and without a chance or hope. 

Miserably I went to bed after all, and miserably thought of 
Estella, and miserably dreamed that my expectations were all 
cancelled, and that I had to give my hand in marriage to Herbert's 
Clara, or play Hamlet to Miss Havisham's Ghost, before twenty 
thousand people, without knowing twenty words of it. 



CHAPTER XXXII. 

One day when I was busy with my books and Mr. Pocket, I 
received a note by the post, the mere outside of which threw me 
into a great flutter ; for, though I had never seen the handwriting 
in which it was addressed, I divined whose hand it was. It had 
no set beginning, as Dear Mr. Pip, or Dear Pip, or Dear Sir, or 
Dear Anything, but ran thus : 

" I am to come to London the day after to-morrow by the mid- 
day coach. I believe it was settled you should meet me ? At all 
events Miss Havisham has that impression, and I write in obedience 
to it. She sends you her regard. — Yours, Estella." 

If there had been time, I should probably have ordered several 
suits of clothes for this occasion ; but as there was not, I was fain 
to be content with those I had. My appetite vanished instantly, 
and I knew no peace or rest until the day arrived. Not that its 
arrival brought me either; for, then I was worse than ever, and 
began haunting the coach-ofiice in Wood-street, Cheapside, before 
the coach had left the Blue Boar in our town. For all that I knew 
this perfectly well, I still felt as if it were not safe to let the 
coach-office be out of my sight longer than five minutes at a time ; 
and in this condition of unreason I had performed the first half- 
hour of a watch of four or five hours, when Wemmick ran against me. 

"Halloa, Mr. Pip," said he, "how do you do ? I should hardly j 
have thought this was your beat." 

I explained that I was waiting to meet somebody who wasi 
coming up by coach, and I inquired after the Castle and the Aged.] 

"Both flourishing, thankye," said Wemmick, "and particularly) 
the Aged. He's in wonderful feather. He'll be eighty-two nextj 
birthday. I have a notion of firing eighty-two times, if the 
neighbourhood shouldn't complain, and that cannon of mine shoulc 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 223 

prove equal to the pressure. However, this is not Loudon talk. 
Where do you think I am going to?" 

"To the otfice," said I, for he was tending in that direction. 

"Next thing to it," returned Wemmick, "I am going to New- 
gate. We are in a banker's-parcel case just at present, and I have 
been down the road taking a squint at the scene of action, and 
thereupon must have a word or two with our client." 

" Did your client commit the robbery ? " I asked. 

"Bless your soul and body, no," answered Wemmick, very 
drily. " But he is accused of it. So might you or I be. Either 
of us might be accused of it, you know." 

" Only neither of us is," I remarked. 

" Yah ! " said Wemmick, touching me on the breast with his 
forefinger; "you're a deep one, Mr. Pip! Would you like to have 
a look at Newgate ? Have you time to spare ? " 

I had so much time to spare that the proposal came as a relief, 
notwithstanding its irreconcilability with my latent desire to keep 
my eye on the coach-office. Muttering that I would make the 
inquiry whether I had time to walk with him, I went into the 
office, and ascertained from the clerk with the nicest precision and 
much to the trying of his temper, the earliest moment at which the 
coach could be expected — which I knew beforehand, quite as well 
as he. I then rejoined Mr. Wemmick, and affecting to consult my 
watch and to be surprised by the information I had received, ac- 
cepted his offer. 

We were at Newgate in a few minutes, and we passed through 
the lodge where some fetters were hanging up on the bare walls 
among the prison rules, into the interior of the jail. At that time, 
jails were much neglected, and the period of exaggerated reaction 
consequent on all public wrong-doing — and which is always its 
heaviest and longest punishment — was still far off. So, felons 
were not lodged and fed better than soldiers (to say nothing of 
paupers), and seldom set fire to their prisons with the excusable ob- 
ject of improving the flavour of their soup. It was visiting time 
when Wemmick took me in ; and a potman was going his rounds 
with beer; and the prisoners, behind bars in yards, were buying 
beer, and talking to friends ; and a frouzy, ugly, disorderly, depress- 
ing scene it was. 

It struck me that Wemmick walked among the prisoners, much 
as a gardener might walk among his plants. This was first put 
into my head by his seeing a shoot that had come up in the night, 
and saying, " What, Captain Tom ? Are you there ? Ah, indeed ? " 
and also, " Is that Black Bill behind the cistern ? Why I didn't 
look for you these two months; how do you find yourself?" 



224 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

Equally in his stopping at the bars and attending to anxious 
whisperers — always singly — Wemmick, with his post-office in an 
immovable state, looked at them while in conference, as if he were 
taking particular notice of the advance they had made, since last 
observed, towards coming out in full blow at their trial. 

He was highly popular, and I found that he took the familiar 
department of Mr. Jaggers's business : though something of the 
state of Mr. Jaggers hung about him too, forbidding approach 
beyond certain limits. His personal recognition of each successive 
client was comprised in a nod, and in his settling his hat a little 
easier on his head with both hands, and then tightening the post- 
oflQce, and putting his hands in his pockets. In one or two in- 
stances, there was a difficulty respecting the raising of fees, and 
then Mr. Wemmick, backing as far as possible from the insufficient 
money produced, said, " It's no use, my boy. I am only a subordi- 
nate. I can't take it. Don't go on in that way with a subordi- 
nate. If you are unable to make up your quantum, my boy, you 
had better address yourself to a principal ; there are plenty of 
principals in the profession, you know, and what is not worth the 
while of one, may be worth the while of another ; that's my recom- 
mendation to you, speaking as a subordinate. Don't try on useless 
measures. Why should you ? Now who's next 1 " 

Thus, we walked through Wemmick's greenhouse, until he turned 
to me and said, " Notice the man I shall shake hands with." I 
should have done so, without the preparation, as he had shaken 
hands with no one yet. 

Almost as soon as he had spoken, a portly upright man (whom 
I can see now, as I write) in a well-worn olive-coloured frock-coat, 
with a peculiar pallor overspreading the red in his complexion, and 
eyes that went wandering about when he tried to fix them, came 
up to a corner of the bars, and put his hand to his hat — which had 
a greasy and fatty surface like cold broth — with a half-serious and 
half-jocose military salute. 

" Colonel, to you ! " said Wemmick ; " how are you. Colonel ? " 

"All right, Mr. Wemmick." 

" Everything was done that could be done, but the evidence was 
too strong for us, Colonel." 

"Yes, it was too strong, sir — but /don't care." 

" No, no," said Wemmick, coolly, " you don't care." Then, turn- 
ing to me, " Served His Majesty, this man. Was a soldier in the 
line and bought his discharge." 

I said, " Indeed ? " and the man's eyes looked at me, and then 
looked over my head, and then looked all round me, and then he 
drew his hand across his lips and laughed. 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 225 

"I think I shall be out of this on Monday, sir," he said to 
Wemmick. 

" Perhaps," returned my friend, " but there's no knowing." 

"I am glad to have the chance of bidding you good bye, Mr. 
Wemmick," said the man, stretching out his hand between two 
bars. 

"Thankye," said Wemmick, shaking hands with him. "Same 
to you. Colonel." 

" If what I had upon me when taken, had been real, Mr. Wem- 
mick," said the man, unwilling to let his hand go, "I should have 
asked the favour of your wearing another ring — in acknowledg- 
ment of your attentions." 

" I'll accept the will for the deed," said Wemmick. " By-the-bye; 
you were quite a pigeon-fancier." The man looked up at the sky. 
" I am told you had a remarkable breed of tumblers. Could you 
commission any friend of yours to bring me a pair, if you've no 
further use for 'em 1 " 

" It shall be done, sir." 

"All right," said Wemmick, " they shall be taken care of. Good 
afternoon, Colonel. G-ood bye ! " They shook hands again, and 
as we walked away Wemmick said to me, " A Coiner, a very good 
workman. The Recorder's report is made to-day, and he is sure to 
be executed on Monday. Still you see, as far as it goes, a pair of 
pigeons are portable property, all the same." With that he looked 
back, and nodded at his dead plant, and then cast his eyes about 
him in walking out of the yard, as if he were considering what 
other pot would go best in its place. 

As we came out of the prison through the lodge, I found that the 
great importance of my guardian was appreciated by the turnkeys, 
no less than by those whom they held in charge. "Well, Mr. 
Wemmick," said the turnkey, who kept us between the two studded 
and spiked lodge gates, and who carefully locked one before he un- 
locked the other, " What's Mr. Jaggers going to do with that Water- 
side murder ? Is he going to make it manslaughter, or what is he 
going to make of it ? " 

" Why don't you ask him ? " returned Wemmick. 

" Oh, yes, I dare say ! " said the turnkey. 

"Now, that's the way with them here, Mr. Pip," remarked 
Wemmick, turning to me with his post-office elongated. " They 
don't mind what they ask of me, the subordinate ; but you'll never 
catch 'em asking any questions of my principal." 

" Is this young gentleman one of the 'prentices or articled ones 
of your office 1 " asked the turnkey, with a grin at Mr. Wemmick's 
humour. 



226 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

" There he goes again, you see ! " cried Wemmick, " I told you 
so ! Asks another question of the subordinate before the first is 
dry ! Well, supposing Mr. Pip is one of them 1 " 

"Why then," said the turnkey, grinning again, " he knows what 
Mr. Jaggers is." 

" Yah ! " cried Wemmick, suddenly hitting out at the turnkey in 
a facetious way, " you're as dumb as one of your own keys when 
you have to do with my principal, you know you are. Let us out, 
you old fox, or I'll get him to bring an action against you for false 
imprisonment." 

The turnkey laughed, and gave us good day, and stood laughing 
at us over the spikes of the wicket when we descended the steps 
into the street. 

"Mind you, Mr. Pip," said Wemmick, gravely in my ear, as 
he took my arm to be more confidential; "I don't know that Mr. 
Jaggers does a better thing than the way in which he keeps him- 
self so high. He's always so high. His constant height is of a 
piece with his immense abilities. That Colonel durst no more take 
leave of him, than that turnkey durst ask him his intentions re- 
specting a case. Then, between his height and them, he slips in 
his subordinate — don't you see? — and so he has 'em, soul and 
body." 

I was very much impressed, and not for the first time, by my 
guardian's subtlety. To confess the truth, I very heartily wished, 
and not for the first time, that I had had some other guardian of 
minor abilities. 

Mr. Wemmick and I parted at the office in Little Britain, where 
suppliants for Mr. Jaggers's notice were lingering about as usual, 
and I returned to my watch in the street of the coach-office, with 
some three hours on hand. I consumed the whole time in think- 
ing how strange it was that I should be encompassed by all this 
taint of prison and crime ; that, in my childhood out on our lonely 
marshes on a winter evening I should have first encountered it ; 
that, it should have reappeared on two occasions, starting out like 
a stain that was faded but not gone ; that, it should in this new way 
pervade my fortune and advancement. While my mind was thus 
engaged, I thought of the beautiful young Estella, proud and re- 
fined, coming towards me, and I thought with absolute abhorrence 
of the contrast between the jail and her. I wished that Wemmick 
had not met me, or that I had not yielded to him and gone with 
him, so that, of all days in the year, on this day I might not have 
had Newgate in my breath and on my clothes. I beat the prison 
dust off" my feet as I sauntered to and fro, and I shook it out of my 
dress, and I exhaled its air from my lungs. So contaminated did I 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 227 

feel, remembering who was coming, that the coach came quickly- 
after all, and I was not yet free from the soiling consciousness of 
Mr. Wemmick's conservatory, when I saw her face at the coach 
window and her hand waving to me. 

What was the nameless shadow which again in that one instant 
had passed ? 



CHAPTER XXXIII. 

In her furred travelling-dress, Estella seemed more delicately 
beautiful than she had ever seemed yet, even in my eyes. Her 
manner was more winning than she had cared to let it be to me 
before, and I thought I saw Miss Havisham's influence in the 
change. 

We stood in the Inn Yard while she pointed out her luggage to 
me, and when it was all collected I remembered — having forgotten 
everything but herself in the meanwhile — that I knew nothing of 
her destination. 

"I am going to Richmond," she told me. " Our lesson is, that 
there are two Richmonds, one in Surrey and one in Yorkshire, and 
that mine is the Surrey Richmond. The distance is ten miles. I 
am to have a carriage, and you are to take me. This is my purse, 
and you are to pay my charges out of it. Oh, you must take the 
purse ! We have no choice, you and I, but to obey our instruc- 
tions. We are not free to follow our own devices, you and I." 

As she looked at me in giving me the purse, I hoped there was 
an inner meaning in her words. She said them slightingly, but 
not with displeasure. 

"A carriage will have to be sent for, Estella. Will you rest 
here a little ? " 

"Yes, I am to rest here a little, and I am to drink some tea, 
and you are to take care of me the while." 

She drew her arm through mine, as if it must be done, and I 
requested a waiter who had been staring at the coach like a man 
who had never seen such a thing in his life, to show us a private 
sitting-room. Upon that, he pulled out a napkin, as if it were a 
magic clue without which he couldn't find the way upstairs, and 
led us to the black hole of the establishment : fitted up with a 
diminishing mirror (quite a superfluous article considering the hole's 
proportions), an anchovy sauce-cruet, and somebody's pattens. On 
my objecting to this retreat, he took us into another room with a 
dinner-table for thirty, and in the grate a scorched leaf of a copy- 



228 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

book under a bushel of coal-dust. Having looked at this extinct 
conflagration and shaken his head, he took my order : which, prov- 
ing to be merely " Some tea for the lady," sent him out of the room 
in a very low state of mind. 

I was, and I am, sensible that the air of this chamber, in its 
strong combination of stable with soup-stock, might have led one 
to infer that the coaching department was not doing well, and that 
the enterprising proprietor was boiling do^vn the horses for the 
refreshment department. Yet the room was all in all to me, 
Estella being in it. I thought that with her I could have been 
happy there for life. (I was not at all happy there at the time, 
observe, and I knew it well.) 

" Where are you going to, at Richmond 1 " I asked Estella. 

" I am going to live," said she, " at a great expense, with a lady 
there, who has the power — or says she has — of taking me about, 
and introducing me, and showing people to me and showing me to 
people." 

" I suppose you will be glad of variety and admiration ? " 

"Yes, I suppose so." 

She answered so carelessly, that I said, "You speak of yourself 
as if you were some one else." 

"Where did you learn how I speak of others? Come, come," 
said Estella, smihug delightfully, "you must not expect me to go 
to school to T/ou; I must talk in my own way. How do you 
thrive with Mr. Pocket ? " 

" I live quite pleasantly there ; at least " It appeared to 

me that I was losing a chance. 

" At least ? " repeated EsteUa. 

"As pleasantly as I could anywhere, away from you." 

"You silly boy," said Estella, quite composedly, "how can you 
talk such nonsense ? Your friend Mr. Matthew, I believe, is supe- 
rior to the rest of his family ? " 

" Very superior indeed. He is nobody's enemy " 

" — Don't add but his own," interposed Estella, " for I hate 
that class of man. But he really is disinterested, and above small 
jealousy and spite, I have heard ? " 

" I am sure I have eveiy reason to say so." 

"You have not every reason to say so of the rest of his people," 
said Estella, nodding at me with an expression of face that was 
at once grave and rallying, " for they beset Miss Havisham with 
reports and insinuations to your disadvantage. They watch you, 
misrepresent you, write letters about you (anonymous sometimes), 
and you are the torment and occupation of their lives. You can 
scarcely realise to yourself the hatred those people feel for you." 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 229 

" They do me no harm, I hope ? " 

Instead of answering, Estella burst out laughing. This was 
very singular to me, and I looked at her in considerable perplexity. 
When she left off — and she had not laughed languidly, but with 
real enjoyment — I said, in my diffident way with her : 

" I hope I may suppose that you would not be amused if .they 
did me any harm 1 " 

"No, no, you may be sure of that," said Estella. "You may 
be certain that I laugh because they fail. Oh, those people with 
Miss Ha\dsham, and the tortures they undergo ! " She laughed 
again, and even now, when she had told me why, her laughter was 
very singular to me, for I could not doubt its being genuine, and 
yet it seemed too much for the occasion. I thought there must 
really be something more here than I knew ; she saw the thought 
in my mind and answered it. 

"It is not easy for even you," said Estella, "to know what sat- 
isfaction it gives me to see those people thwarted, or what an 
enjoyable sense of the ridiculous I have when they are made ridic- 
ulous. For you were not brought up in that strange house from a 
mere baby. — I was. You had not your little vnts sharpened by 
their intriguing against you, suppressed and defenceless, under the 
mask of sympathy and pity and what not, that is soft and sooth- 
ing. — I had. You did not gradually open your round childish 
eyes wider and wider to the discovery of that impostor of a woman 
who calculates her stores of peace of mind for when she wakes up 
in the night. — I did." 

It was no laughing matter with Estella now, nor was she summon- 
ing these remembrances from any shallow place. I would not have 
been the cause of that look of hers, for all my expectations in a heap. 

"Two things I can tell you," said Estella. "First, notwith- 
standing the proverb, that constant dropping will wear away a stone, 
3^ou may set your mind at rest that these people never will — 
never would in a hundred years — impair your ground with Miss 
Havishara, in any particular, great or small. Second, I am be- 
holden to you as the cause of their being so busy and so mean in 
vain, and there is my hand upon it." 

As she gave it me playfully — for her darker mood had been 
but momentary — I held it and put it to my lips. " You ricUcu- 
lous boy," said Estella, "will you never take warning? Or do you 
kiss my hand in the same spirit in which I once let you kiss my 
cheek ? " 

" What spirit was that ? " said I. 

" I must think a moment. A spirit of contempt for the fawners 
and plotters." 



230 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

" If I say yes, may I kiss the cheek again 1 " 

"You shoukl have asked before you touched the hand. But, 
yes, if you like." 

I leaned down, and her calm face was like a statue's. "Now," 
said Estella, gliding away the instant I touched her cheek, "you 
are to take care that I have some tea, and you are to take me to 
Eichmond." 

Her reverting to this tone as if our association were forced upon 
us and we were mere puppets, gave me pain ; but everything in 
our intercourse did give me pain. Whatever her tone with me 
happened to be, 1 coidd put no trust in it, and build no hope on it ; 
and yet I went on against trust and against hope. Why repeat it 
a thousand times ? So it always was. 

I rang for the tea, and the waiter, reappearing with his magic 
clue, brought in by degrees some fifty adjuncts to that refreshment, 
but of tea not a glimpse. A teaboard, cups and saucers, plates, 
knives and forks (including carvers), spoons (various), salt-cellars, 
a meek little muflBn confined with the utmost precaution under a 
strong iron cover, Moses in the bulrushes typified by a soft bit of 
butter in a quantity of parsley, a pale loaf with a powdered head, 
two proof impressions of the bars of the kitchen fire-place on tri- 
angidar bits of bread, and ultimately a fat family urn : which the 
waiter staggered in with, expressing in his countenance burden and 
suffering. After a prolonged absence at this stage of the entertain- 
ment, he at length came back with a casket of precious appearance 
containing twigs. These I steeped in hot water, and so from the 
whole of these appliances extracted one cup of I don't know what, 
for Estella. 

The bill paid, and the waiter remembered, and the ostler not for- 
gotten, and the chambermaid taken into consideration — in a word, 
the whole house bribed into a state of contempt and animosity, and 
Estella's purse much lightened — we got into our post-coach and 
drove away. Turning into Cheapside and rattling up Newgate- 
street, we were soon under the walls of which I was so ashamed. 

" What place is that 1 " Estella asked me. 

I made a foolish pretence of not at first recognising it, and then 
told her. As she looked at it, and drew in her head again, mur- 
muring " Wretches ! " I would not have confessed to my visit for 
any consideration. 

"Mr. Jaggers," said I, by way of putting it neatly on somebody 
else, " has the reputation of being more in the secrets of that dis- 
mal place than any man in London." 

" He is more in the secrets of every place, I think," said Estella, 
in a low voice. 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 231 

" You have been accustomed to see him often, I suppose ? " 

" I have been accustomed to see him at uncertain intervals, ever 
since I can remember. But I know him no better now, than I did 
before I could speak plainly. What is your own experience of 
him 1 Do you advance with him ? " 

"Once habituated to his distrustful manner," said I, "I have 
done very well." 

" Are you intimate 1 " 

"I have dined with him at his private house." 

"I fancy," said Estella, shrinking, "that must be a curious 
place." 

" It is a curious place." 

I should have been chary of discussing my guardian too freely 
even with her ; but I should have gone on with the subject so far 
as to describe the dinner in Gerrard-street, if we had not then come 
into a sudden glare of gas. It seemed, while it lasted, to be all 
alight and alive with that inexplicable feeling I had had before ; 
and when we were out of it, I was as much dazed for a few mo- 
ments as if I had been in Lightning. 

So, we fell into other talk, and it was principally about the way 
by which we were travelling, and about what parts of London lay 
on this side of it, and what on that. The great city was almost 
new to her, she told me, for she had never left Miss Havisham's 
neighbourhood until she had gone to France, and she had merely 
passed through London then in going and returning. I asked her 
if my guardian had any charge of her while she remained here? 
To that she emphatically said, " God forbid ! " and no more. 

It was impossible for me to avoid seeing that she cared to attract 
me ; that she made herself Avinning ; and would have won me even 
if the task had needed pains. Yet this made me none the happier, 
for, even if she had not taken that tone of our being disposed of 
by others, I should have felt that she held my heart in her hand 
because she mlfully chose to do it, and not because it would have 
wrung any tenderness in her, to crush it and throw it away. 

When we passed through Hammersmith, I showed her where 
Mr. Matthew Pocket lived, and said it was no great way from 
Richmond, and that I hoped I should see her sometimes. 

" Oh yes, you are to see me ; you are to come when you think 
proper ; you are to be mentioned to the family ; indeed you are 
already mentioned." 

I inquired was it a large household she was going to be a mem- 
ber of? 

" No ; there are only two ; mother and daughter. The mother 
is a lady of some station, though not averse to increasing her 
income." 



232 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

"I wonder Miss Havisham could part with you again so soon." 

"It is part of Miss Havisham's plans for me, Pip," said Estella, 
with a sigh, as if she were tired ; " I am to write to her constantly 
and see her regularly, and report how I go on — I and the jewels 
— for they are nearly all mine now." 

It was the first time she had ever called me by my name. Of 
course she did so purposely, and knew that I should treasure it up. 

We came to Eichmond all too soon, and our destination there 
was a house by the Green : a staid old house, where hoops and 
powder and patches, embroidered coats, rolled stockings, ruffles, 
and swords, had had their court days many a time. Some ancient 
trees before the house were still cut into fashions as formal and 
unnatural as the hoops and wigs and stiff skirts ; but their own 
allotted places in the great procession of the dead were not far off, 
and they would soon drop into them and go the silent way of the 
rest. 

A bell with an old voice — which I dare say in its time had 
often said to the house, Here is the green farthingale. Here is the 
diamond-hilted sword. Here are the shoes with red heels and the 
blue solitaire, — sounded gravely in the moonHght, and two cherry- 
coloured maids came fluttering out to receive Estella. The door- 
way soon absorbed her boxes, and she gave me her hand and a smile, 
and said good night, and was absorbed likewise. And still I stood 
looking at the house, thinking how happy I should be if I lived 
there with her, and knowing that I never was happy with her, 
but always miserable. 

I got into the carriage to be taken back to Hammersmith, and I 
got in with a bad heart-ache, and I got out with a worse heart-ache. 
At our own door I found little Jane Pocket coming home from a 
little party, escorted by her little lover; and I envied her little 
lover, in spite of his being subject to Flopson. 

Mr. Pocket was out lecturing; for he was a most delightful 
lecturer on domestic economy, and his treatises on the management 
of children and servants were considered the very best text-books 
on those themes. But Mrs. Pocket was at home, and was in a 
little difficulty, on account of the baby's having been accommodated 
with a needle-case to keep him quiet during the unaccountable absence 
(with a relative in the Foot Guards) of Millers. And more needles 
were missing than it could be regarded as quite wholesome for a 
patient of such tender years either to apply externally or to take 
as a tonic. 

Mr. Pocket being justly celebrated for giving most excellent prac- 
tical advice, and for having a clear and sound perception of things 
and a highly judicious mind, I had some notion in my heart-ache 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 233 

of begging him to accept my confidence. But happening to look 
up at Mrs. Pocket as she sat reading her book of dignities after 
prescribing Bed as a sovereign remedy for baby, I thought — Well 
— No, I wouldn't. 



CHAPTER XXXIV. 

As I had grown accustomed to my expectations, I had insen- 
sibly begun to notice their effect upon myself and those around me. 
Their influence on my own character I disguised from my recogni- 
tion as much as possible, but I knew very well that it was not all 
good. I lived in a state of chronic uneasiness respecting my behav- 
iour to Joe. My conscience was not by any means comfortable about 
Biddy. When I woke up in the night — like Camilla — I used to 
think, with a weariness on my spirits, that I should have been hap- 
pier and better if I had never seen Miss Havisham's face, and had 
risen to manhood content to be partners with Joe in the honest old 
forge. Many a time of an evening, when I sat alone looking at the 
fire, I thought, after aU, there was no fire like the forge fire and the 
kitchen fire at home. 

Yet Estella was so inseparable from all my restlessness and dis- 
quiet of mind, that I really fell into confusion as to the limits of 
my own part in its production.- That is to say, supposing I had 
had no expectations, and yet had had Estella to think of, I could 
not make out to my satisfaction that I should have done much 
better. Now, concerning the influence of my position on others, I 
was in no such difiiculty, and so I perceived — though dimly enough 
perhaps — that it was not beneficial to anybody, and, above all, that 
it was not beneficial to Herbert. My lavish habits led his easy nat- 
ure into expenses that he could not afford, corrupted the simplicity 
of his life, and disturbed his peace with anxieties and regrets. I 
was not at all remorseful for having unwittingly set those other 
branches of the Pocket family to the poor arts they practised : 
because such littlenesses were their natural bent, and would have 
been evoked by anybody else, if I had left them slumbering. But 
Herbert's was a very different case, and it often caused me a twinge 
to think that I had done him evil service in crowding his sparely- 
furnished chambers with incongruous upholstery work, and placing 
the canary-breasted Avenger at his disposal. 

So now, as an infallible way of making little ease great ease, I 
began to contract a quantity of debt. I could hardly begin but Her- 
bert must begin too, so he soon followed. At Startop's suggestion, we 



234 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

put ourselves down for election into a club called the Finches of 
the Grrove : the object of which institution I have never divined, if 
it were not that the members should dine expensively once a fort- 
night, to quarrel among themselves as much as possible after din- 
ner, and to cause six waiters to get drunk on the stairs. I know 
that these gratifying social ends were so invariably accomplished, 
that Herbert and I understood nothing else to be referred to in the 
first standing toast of the society : which ran, " Gentlemen, may 
the present promotion of good feeling ever reign predominant among 
the Finches of the Grove." 

The Finches spent their money foolishly (the Hotel we dined at 
was in Covent Garden), and the first Finch I saw when I had the 
honour of joining the Grove was Bentley Drummle : at that time 
floundering about town in a cab of his own, and doing a great deal 
of damage to the posts at the street corners. Occasionally, he shot 
himself out of his equipage head-foremost over the apron ; and I saw 
him on one occasion deliver himself at the door of the Grove in this 
unintentional way — like 6oals. But here I anticipate a little, for I 
was not a Finch, and could not be, according to the sacred laws of 
the society, until I came of age. 

In my confidence in my own resources, I would willingly have 
taken Herbert's expenses on myself; but Herbert was proud, and I 
could make no such proposal to him. So, he got into difficulties in 
every direction, and continued to look about him. When we grad- 
ually fell into keeping late hours and late company, I noticed that 
he looked about him with a desponding eye at breakfast-time; 
that he began to look about him more hopefully about mid-day ; 
that he drooped when he came in to dinner; that he seemed to 
descry Capital in the distance, rather clearly, after dinner ; that he 
all but realised Capital towards midnight ; and that about two 
o'clock in the morning, he became so deeply despondent again as to 
talk of buying a rifle and going to America, with a general purpose 
of compelling buffaloes to make his fortune. 

I was usually at Hammersmith about half the week, and when I 
was at Hammersmith I haunted Richmond : whereof separately by- 
and-bye. Herbert would often come to Hammersmith when I was 
there, and I think at those seasons his father would occasionally 
have some passing perception that the opening he was looking for 
had not appeared yet. But in the general tumbling up of the 
family, his tumbling out in life somewhere, was a thing to transact 
itself somehow. In the meantime Mr. Pocket grew greyer, and 
tried oftener to lift himself out of his perplexities by the hair. 
While Mrs. Pocket tripped up the family with her footstool, read 
her book of dignities, lost her pocket-handkerchief, told us about 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 235 

her grandpapa, and taught the young idea how to shoot, by shoot- 
ing it into bed whenever it attracted her notice. 

As I am now generaUsing a period of my life with the object of 
clearing my way before me, I can scarcely do so better than by at 
once completing the description of our usual manners and customs 
at Barnard's Inn. 

We spent as much money as we could, and got as little for it as 
people could make up their minds tQ give us. We were always 
more or less miserable, and most of our acquaintance were in the 
same condition. There was a gay fiction among us that we were 
constantly enjoying ourselves, and a skeleton truth that we never 
did. To the best of my belief, our case was in the last aspect a 
rather common one. 

Eveiy morning, with an air ever new, Herbert went into the City 
to look about him. I often paid him a visit in the dark back-room 
in which he consorted with an ink-jar, a hat-peg, a coal-box, a string- 
box, an almanack, a desk and stool, and a ruler ; and I do not re- 
member that I ever saw him do anything else but look about him. 
If we all did what we undertake to do, as faithfully as Herbert did, 
we might live in a Republic of the Virtues. He had nothing else 
to do, poor fellow, except at a certain hour of every afternoon to 
"go to Lloyd's " — in observance of a ceremony of seeing his prin- 
cipal, I think. He never did anything else in connection with 
Lloyd's that I could find out, except come back again. When he 
felt his case unusually serious, and that he positively must find an 
opening, he would go on 'Change at a busy time, and walk in and 
out, in a kind of gloomy country dance figure, among the assembled 
magnates. "For," says Herbert to me, coming home to dinner on 
one of those special occasions, "I find the truth to be, Handel, that 

an opening won't come to one, but one must go to it so I 

have been." 

If we had been less attached to one another, I think we must 
have hated one another regularly every morning. I detested the 
chambers beyond expression at that period of repentance, and could 
not endure the sight of the Avenger's livery : which had a more 
expensive and a less remunerative appearance then, than at any 
other time in the four-and-twenty hours. As we got more and more 
into debt, breakfast became a hollower and hollower form, and being 
on one occasion at breakfast-time threatened (by letter) with legal 
proceedings, "not unwholly unconnected," as my local paper might 
put it, "with jewellery," I went so far as to seize the Avenger by 
his blue collar and shake him ofi" his feet — so that he was actually 
in the air, like a booted Cupid — for presuming to suppose that we 
wanted a roll. 



236 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

At certain times — : meaning at uncertain times, for they depended 
on our humour — I would say to Herbert, as if it were a remark- 
able discovery : 

"My dear Herbert, we are getting on badly," 

"My dear Handel," Herbert would say to me, in all sincerity, 
" if you will believe me, those veiy words were on my lips, by a 
strange coincidence." 

"Then, Herbert," I would respond, "let us look into our affairs." 

We always derived profound satisfaction from making an appoint- 
ment for this purpose. I always thought this was business, this 
was the way to confront the thing, this was the way to take the 
foe by the throat. And I know Herbert thought so too. 

We ordered something rather special for dinner, with a bottle of 
something similarly out of the common way, in order that our minds 
might be fortified for the occasion, and we might come well up to 
the mark. Dinner over, we produced a bundle of pens, a copious 
supply of ink, and a goodly show of writing and blotting paper. 
For, there was something very comfortable in having plenty of 
stationery. 

I would then take a sheet of paper, and write across the top of 
it, in a neat hand, the heading, "Memorandum of Pip's debts;" 
with Barnard's Inn and the date very carefully added. Herbert 
would also take a sheet of paper, and write across it with similar 
formalities, "Memorandum of Herbert's debts." 

Each of us would then refer to a confused heap of papers at his 
side, which had been thrown into drawers, worn into holes in pock- 
ets, half-burnt in lighting candles, stuck for weeks into the look- 
ing-glass, and othei'wise damaged. The sound of our pens going 
refreshed us exceedingly, insomuch that I sometimes found it diffi- 
cult to distinguish between this edifying business proceeding and 
actually paying the money. In point of meritorious character, the 
two things seemed about equal. 

When we had written a little while, I would ask Herbert how 
he got on ? Herbert probably would have been scratching his head 
in a most rueful manner at the sight of his accumulating figures. 

"They are mounting up, Handel," Herbert would say; "upon 
my life they are mounting up." 

"Be firm, Herbert," I would retort, plying my own pen with 
great assiduity. "Look the thing in the face. Look into your 
afiairs. Stare them out of countenance." 

" So I would, Handel, only they are staring me out of counte- 
nance." 

However, my determined manner would have its effect, and Her- 
bert would fall to work again. After a time he would give up once 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 237 

more, on the plea that he had not got Cobbs's bill, or Lobbs's, or 
Nobbs's, as the case might be. 

"Then, Herbert, estimate; estimate it in round numbers, and 
put it down." 

" What a fellow of resource you are ! " my friend would reply, with 
admiration. " Really your business powers are very remarkalDle." 

I thought so too. I established with myself, on these occasions, 
the reputation of a first-rate man of business — prompt, decisive, 
energetic, clear, cool-headed. When I had got all my responsibilities 
down upon my list, I compared each with the bill, and ticked it off. 
My self-approval when I ticked an entry was quite a luxurious sen- 
sation. When I had no more ticks to make, I folded all my bills 
up uniformly, docketed each on the back, and tied the whole into a 
symmetrical bundle. Then I did the same for Herbert (who mod- 
estly said he had not my administrative genius), and felt that I had 
brought his affairs into a focus for him. 

My business habits had one other bright feature, which I called 
"leaving a Margin." For example; supposing Herbert's debts to 
be one hundred and sixty-four pounds four-and-twopence, I would 
say, "Leave a margin, and put them down at two hundred." Or, 
supposing my own to be four times as much, I would leave a mar- 
gin, and put them down at seven hundred. I had the highest 
opinion of the wisdom of this same Margin, but I am bound to 
acknowledge that on looking back, I deem it to have been an 
expensive device. For, we always ran into new debt immediately, 
to the full extent of the margin, and sometimes, in the sense of 
freedom and solvency it imparted, got pretty far on into another 
margin. 

But there was a calm, a rest, a virtuous hush, consequent on 
these examinations of our affairs, that gave me, for the time, 
an admirable opinion of myself. Soothed by my exertions, my 
method, and Herbert's compliments, I would sit with his symmet- 
rical bundle and my own on the table before me among the sta- 
tionery, and feel like a Bank of some sort, rather than a private 
individual. 

We shut our outer door on these solemn occasions in order that 
we might not be interrupted. I had fallen into my serene state 
one evening, when we heard a letter dropped through the slit in 
the said door, and fall on the ground. " It's for you, Handel," 
said Herbert, going out and coming back with it, "and I hope 
there is nothing the matter." This was in allusion to its heavy 
black seal and border. 

The letter was signed Tkabb & Co., and its contents were sim- 
ply, that I was an honoured sir, and that they begged to inform 



238 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

me that Mrs. J. Gargery had departed this life on Monday last at 
twenty minutes past six in the evening, and that my attendance 
was requested at the interment on Monday next at three o'clock in 
the afternoon. 



CHAPTER XXXV. 

It was the first time that a grave had opened in my road of life, 
and the gap it made in the smooth ground was wonderful. The 
figure of my sister in her chau- by the kitchen fire, haunted me 
night and day. That the place could possibly be, without her, was 
something my mind seemed unable to compass ; and whereas she 
had seldom or never been in my thoughts of late, I had now the 
strangest idea that she was coming towards me in the street, or 
that she would presently knock at the door. In my rooms too, 
with which she had never been at all associated, there was at once 
the blankness of death and a perpetual suggestion of the sound of 
her voice or the turn of her face or figure, as if she were still alive 
and had been often there. 

Whatever my fortunes might have been, I could scarcely have 
recalled my sister with much tenderness. But I suppose there is 
a shock of regret which may exist without much tenderness. Under 
its influence (and perhaps to make up for the want of the softer 
feeling) I was seized with a violent indignation against the assail- 
ant from whom she had suffered so much ; and I felt that on suffi- 
cient proof I could have revengefully pursued Orlick, or any one 
else, to the last extremity. 

Having written to Joe, to offer him consolation, and to assure 
him that I would come to the funeral, I passed the intermediate 
days in the curious state of mind I have glanced at. I went down 
early in tne morning, and alighted at the Blue Boar, in good time 
to walk over to, the forge. 

It was fine summer weather again, and, as I walked along, the 
times when I was a little helpless creature, and my sister did not 
spare me, vividly returned. But they returned with a gentle tone 
upon them, that softened even the edge of Tickler. For now, the 
very breath of the beans and clover whispered to my heart that the 
day must come Avhen it would be well for my memory that others 
walking in the sunshine should be softened as they thought of me. 

At last I came within sight of the house, and saw that Trabb and 
Co. had put in a funeral execution and taken possession. Two dis- 
mally absurd persons, each ostentatiously exhibiting a crutch done 
up in a black bandage — as if that instrument could possibly com- 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 239 

mimicate any comfort to anybody — were posted at the front door ; 
and in one of them I recognised a postboy discharged from the Boar 
for turning a young couple into a sawpit on their bridal morning, in 
consequence of intoxication rendering it necessary for him to ride 
his horse clasped round the neck with both arms. All the children 
of the village, and most of the women, were admiring these sable 
warders and the closed windows of the house and forge ; and as I 
came up, one of the two warders (the postboy) knocked at the door 
— implying that I was far too much exhausted by grief, to have 
strength remaining to knock for myself. 

Another sable warder (a carpenter, who had once eaten two 
geese for a wager) opened the door, and showed me into the best 
parlour. Here, Mr. Trabb had taken unto himself the best table, 
and had got all the leaves up, and was holding a kind of black 
Bazaar, with the aid of a quantity of black pins. At the moment 
of my arrival, he had just finished putting somebody's hat into 
black long-clothes, like an African baby; so he held out his hand 
for mine. But I, misled by the action, and confused by the 
occasion, shook hands with him with every testimony of warm 
affection. 

Poor dear Joe, entangled in a little black cloak tied in a large 
bow under his chin, was seated apart at the upper end of the room ; 
where, as chief mourner, he had evidently been stationed by Trabb. 
When I bent down and said to him, "Dear Joe, how are you?" he 
said, " Pip, old chap, you know'd her when she were a fine figure 
of a " and clasped my hand and said no more. 

Biddy, looking very neat and modest in her black dress, went 
quietly here and there, and was very helpful. When I had spoken 
to Biddy, as I thought it not a time for talking, I went and sat 
down near Joe, and there began to wonder in what part of the 
house it — she — my sister — was. The air of the parlour being 
faint with the smell of sweet cake, I looked about for the table of 
refreshments ; it was scarcely visible until one had got accustomed 
to the gloom, but there was a cut-up plum-cake upon it, and there 
were cut-up oranges, and sandwiches, and biscuits, and two decan- 
ters that I knew very well as ornaments, but had never seen used in 
all my life : one full of port, and one of sherry. Standing at this 
table, I became conscious of the servile Pumblechook in a black 
cloak and several yards of hatband, who was alternately stuffing 
himself, and making obsequious movements to catch my attention. 
The moment he succeeded, he came over to me (breathing sherry 
and crumbs), and said in a subdued voice, " May I, dear sir ? " and 
did. I then descried Mr. and Mrs. Hubble ; the last-named in a 
decent speechless paroxysm in a corner. We were all going to 



240 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

"follow," and were all in course of being tied up separately (by 
Trabb) into ridiculous bundles. 

" Which I meantersay, Pip," Joe whispered me, as we were being 
what Mr. Trabb called "formed " in the parlour, two and two — 
and it was dreadfully like a preparation for some grim kind of 
dance; "which I meantersay, sir, as I would in preference have 
carried her to the church myself, along mth three or four friendly 
ones wot come to it with willing harts and arms, but it were con- 
sidered wot the neighbours would look down on such and would be 
of opinions as it were wanting in respect." 

" Pocket-handkerchiefs out, all ! " cried Mr. Trabb at this point, 
in a depressed business-like voice — " Pocket-handkerchiefs out ! 
We are ready ! " 

So, we all put our pocket-handkerchiefs to our faces, as if our 
noses were bleeding, and filed out two and two ; Joe and I ; Biddy 
and Pumblechook ; Mr. and Mrs. Hubble. The remains of my 
poor sister had been brought round by the kitchen door, and, it 
being a point of Undertaking ceremony that the six bearers must 
be stifled and blinded under a horrible black velvet housing with a 
white border, the whole looked like a blind monster with twelve 
human legs, shuflSing and blundering along under the guidance of 
two keepers — the postboy and his comrade. 

The neighbourhood, however, highly approved of these arrange- 
ments, and we were much admired as we went through the \illage ; 
the more youthful and vigorous part of the community making 
dashes now and then to cut us off, and lying in wait to intercept us 
at points of vantage. At such times the more exuberant among 
them called out in an excited manner on our emergency round some 
corner of expectancy, " Here they come ! " '"''Here they are ! " and 
we were all but cheered. In this progress I was much annoyed by 
the abject Pumblechook, who, being behind me, persisted all the 
way, as a delicate attention, in arranging my streaming hatband, 
and smoothing my cloak. My thoughts were further distracted by 
the excessive pride of Mr. and Mrs. Hubble, who were surpassingly 
conceited and vainglorious in being members of so distinguished a 
procession. 

And now the range of marshes lay clear before us, with the sails 
of the ships on the river growing out of it ; and we went into the 
churchyard, close to the graves of my unknown parents, Philip 
Pirrip, late of this parish, and Also Georgiana, Wife of the Above. 
And there, my sister was laid quietly in the earth while the larks 
sang high above it, and the light wind strewed it with beautiful 
shadows of clouds and trees. 

Of the conduct of the worldly-minded Pumblechook while this 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 241 

was doing, I desire to say no more than it was all addressed to me ; 
and that even when those noble passages were read which reminded 
humanity how it brought nothing into the world and can take noth- 
ing out, and how it fleeth like a shadow and never continueth long 
in one stay, I heard him cough a reservation of the case of a young 
gentleman who came unexpectedly into large property. When we 
got back, he had the hardihood to tell me that he washed my sister 
could have known I had done her so much honour, and to hint that 
she would have considered it reasonably purchased at the price of 
her death. After that, he drank all the rest of the sherry, and 
Mr. Hubble drank the port, and the two talked (which I have 
since observed to be customary in such cases) as if they were of quite 
another race from the deceased, and were notoriously immortal. 
Finally, he went away with Mr. and Mrs. Hubble — to make an 
evening of it, I felt sure, and to tell the Jolly Bargemen that he 
was the founder of my fortunes and my earhest benefactor. 

When they were all gone, and when Trabb and his men — but 
not his boy : I looked for him — had crammed their mummery into 
bags, and were gone too, the house felt wholesomer. Soon after- 
wards, Biddy, Joe, and I, had a cold dinner together ; but we 
dined in the best parlour, not in the old kitchen, and Joe was so 
exceedingly particular what he did with his knife and fork and the 
salt-cellar and what not, that there was great restraint upon us. 
But after dinner, when I made him take his pipe, and when I had 
loitered with him about the forge, and when we sat down together 
on the great block of stone outside it, we got on better. I noticed 
that after the funeral Joe changed his clothes so far, as to make 
a compromise between his Sunday dress and working dress : in 
which the dear fellow looked natural, and like the Man he was. 

He was very much pleased by my asking if I might sleep in my 
own little room, and I was pleased too ; for, I felt that I had done 
rather a great thing in making the request. When the shadows of 
evening were closing in, I took an opportunity of getting into the 
garden with Biddy for a little talk. 

" Biddy," said I, " I think you might have "written to me about 
these sad matters." 

" Do you, Mr. Pip 1 " said Biddy. " I should have written if I 
had thought that." 

" Don't suppose that I mean to be unkind, Biddy, when I say I 
consider that you ought to have thought that." 

"Do you, Mr. Pip?" 

She was so quiet, and had such an orderly, good, and pretty way 
with her, that I did not like the thought of making her cry again. 
After looking a little at her downcast eyes as she walked beside me, 
I gave up that point. 



242 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

" I suppose it will be difficult for you to remain here now, Biddy, 
dear?" 

" Oh ! I can't do so, Mr. Pip," said Biddy, in a tone of regret, 
but still of quiet conviction. " I have been speaking to Mrs. Hub- 
ble, and I am going to her to-morrow. I hope we shall be able 
to take some care of Mr. Gargery, together, until he settles down." 

" How are you going to live, Biddy ? If you want any mo — " 

" How am I going to live ? " repeated Biddy, striking in^ with a 
momentary flush upon her face. "I'll tell you, Mr. Pip. I am 
going to try to get the place of mistress in the new school nearly 
finished here. I can be well recommended by all the neighbours, 
and I hope I can be industrious and patient, and teach myself while 
I teach others. You know, Mr. Pip," pursued Biddy, with a smile, 
as she raised her eyes to my face, " the new schools are not like the 
old, but I learnt a good deal from you after that time, and have 
had time since then to improve." 

" I think you would always improve, Biddy, under any circum- 
stances." 

" Ah ! Except in my bad side of human nature," murmured Biddy. 

It was not so much a reproach, as an irresistible thinking aloud. 
Well ! I thought I would give up that point too. So, I walked a 
little further with Biddy, looking silently at her downcast eyes. 

" I have not heard the particulars of my sister's death, Biddy." 

" They are very slight, poor thing. She had been in one of her 
bad states — though they had got better of late, rather than worse 
— for four days, when she came out of it in the evening, just at 
tea-time, and said quite plainly, 'Joe.' As she had never said any 
word for a long while, I ran and fetched in Mr, Gargery from the 
forge. She made signs to me that she wanted him to sit down 
close to her, and wanted me to put her arms round his neck. So 
I put them round his neck, and she laid her head down on his 
shoulder quite content and satisfied. And so she presently said 
' Joe ' again, and once ' Pardon,' and once ' Pip.' And so she never 
lifted her head up any more, and it was just an hour later when 
we laid it down on her own bed, because we found she was gone." 

Biddy cried ; the darkening garden, and the lane, and the stars 
that were coming out, were blurred in my own sight. 

" Nothing was ever discovered, Biddy ? " 

"Nothing." 

" Do you know what is become of Orlick ? " 

" I should think from the colour of his clothes that he is work- 
ing in the quarries." 

"Of course you have seen him then? — Why are you looking 
at that dark tree in the lane ? " 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 243 

"I saw him there, on the night she died." 

"That was not the last time eitlier, Biddy?" 

" No ; I have seen him there since we have been walking here. 
— It is of no use," said Biddy, laying her hand upon my arm, as 
I was for running out, " you know I would not deceive you ; he 
was not there a minute, and he is gone." 

It revived my utmost indignation to find that she was still 
pursued by this fellow, and I felt inveterate against him. I told 
her so, and told her that I would spend any money or take any 
pains to drive him out of that country. By degrees she led me 
into more temperate talk, and she told me how Joe loved me, and 
how Joe never complained of anything — she didn't say, of me ; 
she had no need; I knew what she meant — but ever did his 
duty in his way of life, with a strong hand, a quiet tongue, and a 
gentle heart. 

"Indeed, it would be hard to say too much for him," said I; 
" and, Biddy, we must often speak of these things, for of course I 
shall be often down here now. I am not going to leave poor Joe 
alone." 

Biddy said never a single word. 

" Biddy, don't you hear me ? " 

"Yes, Mr. Pip." 

"Not to mention your calling me Mr. Pip — which appears to 
me to be in bad taste, Biddy — what do you mean ? " 

"What do I mean?" asked Biddy, timidly. 

"Biddy," said I, in a virtuously self-asserting manner, "I must 
request to know what you mean by this ? " 

"By this?" said Biddy. 

"No, don't echo," I retorted. "You used not to echo, Biddy." 

" Used not ! " said Biddy. " Mr. Pip ! Used ! " 

Well! I rather thought I would give up that point too. 
After another silent turn in the garden, I fell back on the main 
position. 

" Biddy," said I, " I made a remark respecting my coming down 
here often, to see Joe, which you received with a marked silence. 
Have the goodness, Biddy, to tell me why." 

"Are you quite sure, then, that you will come to see him 
often?" asked Biddy, stopping in the narrow garden walk, and 
looking at me under the stars, with a clear and honest eye. 

" Oh dear me ! " said I, as I found myself compelled to give up 
Biddy in despair. " This really is a very bad side of human 
nature ! Don't say any more, if you please, Biddy. This shocks 
me very much." 

For which cogent reason I kept Biddy at a distance during 



244 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

supper, and when I went up to my o^vn old little room, took as 
stately a leave of her as I could, in my murmuring soul, deem 
reconcilable with the churchyard and the event of the day. As 
often as I was restless in the night, and that was every quarter of 
an hour, I reflected what an unkindness, what an injury, what an 
injustice, Biddy had done me. 

Early in the morning, I was to go. Early in the morning, I 
was out, and looking in, unseen, at one of the wooden wdndows of 
the forge. There I stood, for minutes, looking at Joe, already 
at work with a glow of health and strength upon his face that 
made it show as if the bright sun of the life in store for him were 
shining on it. 

"Good bye, dear Joe! — No, don't wipe it off — for God's 
sake, give me your blackened hand ! — I shall be down soon and 
often." 

"Never too soon, sir," said Joe, " and never too often, Pip ! " 

Biddy was waiting for me at the kitchen door, with a mug of 
new milk and a crust of bread. " Biddy," said I, when I gave her 
my hand at parting, "I am not angry, but I am hurt." 

"No, don't be hurt," she pleaded quite pathetically; "let only 
me be hurt, if I have been ungenerous." 

Once more, the mists were rising as I walked away. If they 
disclosed to me, as I suspect they did, that I should not come back, 
and that Biddy was quite right, all I can say is — they were 
quite right too. 



CHAPTER XXXVI. 

Herbert and I went on from bad to worse, in the way of in- 
creasing our debts, looking into our affairs, leaving Margins, and 
the like exemplary transactions ; and Time went on, wli ether or no, 
as he has a way of doing ; and I came of age — in fulfilment of 
Herbert's prediction, that I should do so before I knew where I was. 

Herbert himself had come of age, eight months before me. As 
he had nothing else than his majority to come into, the event did 
not make a profound sensation in Barnard's Inn. But we had 
looked forward to my one-and-twentieth birthday, with a crowd of 
speculations and anticipations, for we had both considered that 
my guardian could hardly help saying something definite on that 
occasion. 

I had taken care to have it well understood in Little Britain 
when my birthday was. On the day before it, I received an offi- 
cial note from Wemmick, informing me that Mr. Jaggers would 




TAKING LEAVE OF JOE. 



246 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

be glad if I would call upon him at five in the afternoon of the 
auspicious day. This convinced us that something great was to 
happen, and threw me into an unusual flutter when I repaired to 
my guardian's oflice, a model of punctuality. 

In the outer office Wemmick offered me his congratulations, and 
incidentally rubbed the side of his nose with a folded piece of tissue- 
paper that I liked the look of. But he said nothing respecting it, 
and motioned me with a nod into my guardian's room. It was 
November, and my guardian was standing before his fire leaning 
his back against the chimney-piece, with his hands under his coat- 
tails, 

"Well, Pip," said he, "I must call you Mr. Pip to-day. Con- 
gratulations, Mr. Pip." 

We shook hands — he was always a remarkably short shaker 

— and I thanked him. 

" Take a chair, Mr. Pip," said my guardian. 

As I sat down, and he preserved his attitude and bent his brows 
a/t his boots, I felt at a disadvantage, which reminded me of that 
old time when I had been put upon a tombstone. The two ghastly 
casts on the shelf were not far from him, and their expression was 
as if they were making a stupid apoplectic attempt to attend to 
the conversation. 

"Now, my young friend," my guardian began, as if I were a 
witness in the box, "I am going to have a word or two with you." 

" If you please, sir." 

"What clo you suppose," said Mr. Jaggers, bending forward to 
look at the ground, and then throwing his head back to look at 
the ceiling, "what do you suppose you are living at the rate of?" 

" At the rate of, sir?" 

"At," repeated Mr. Jaggers, still looking at the ceiling, "the 

— rate — of?" And then looked all round the room, and paused 
with his pocket-handkerchief in his hand, half way to his nose. 

I had looked into my afi*airs so often, that I had thoroughly 
destroyed any slight notion I might ever have had of their bear- 
ings. Reluctantly, I confessed myself quite unable to answer the 
question. This reply seemed agreeable to Mr. Jaggers, who said, 
" I thought so ! " and blew his nose with an air of satisfaction. 

"Now, I have asked you a question, my friend," said Mr. 
Jaggers. "Have you anything to ask meV 

" Of course it would be a great relief to me to ask you several 
questions, sir; but I remember your prohibition." 

" Ask one," said Mr. Jaggers. 

"Is my benefactor to be made known to me to-day? " 

" No. Ask another." 



' GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 247 

" Is that confidence to be imparted to me soon ? " 

"Waive that, a moment," said Mr. Jaggers, "and ask another." 

I looked about me, but there appeared to be now no possible 
escape from the inquiry, "Have — I — anything to receive, sir?" 
On that, Mr. Jaggers said, triumphantly, "I thought we should 
come to it ! " and called to Wemmick to give him that piece of 
paper. Wemmick appeared, handed it in, and disappeared. 

" Now, Mr. Pip," said Mr. Jaggers, " attend if you please. You 
have been drawing pretty freely here; your name occurs pretty 
often in Wemmick's cash book : but you are in debt, of course ? " 

" I am afraid I must say yes, sir." 

" You know you must say yes ; don't you ? " said Mr. Jaggers. 

"Yes, sir." 

"I don't ask you what you owe, because you don't know; and 
if you did know, you wouldn't tell me ; you would say less. Yes, 
yes, my friend," cried Mr. Jaggers, waving his forefinger to stop 
me, as I made a show of protesting : " it's likely enough that you 
think you wouldn't, but you would. You'll excuse me, but I know 
better than you. Now, take this piece of paper in your hand. 
You have got it 1 Very good. Now, unfold it and tell me what 
it is." 

"This is a bank-note," said I, "for five hundred pounds." 

"That is a bank-note," repeated Mr. Jaggers, "for five hun- 
dred pounds. And a very handsome sum of money too, I think. 
You consider it so *? " 

" How could I do otherwise ! " 

"Ah ! But answer the question," said Mr. Jaggers. 

" Undoubtedly." 

"You consider it, undoubtedly, a handsome sum of money. 
Now, that handsome sum of money, Pip, is your own. It is a pres- 
ent to you on this day, in earnest of your expectations. And at 
the rate of that handsome sum of money per annum, and at no 
higher rate, you are to live until the donor of the whole appears. 
That is to say, you will now take your money aff'airs entirely into 
your own hands, and you will draw from Wemmick one hundred 
and twenty-five pounds per quarter, until you are in communica- 
tion with the fountain-head, and no longer with the mere agent. 
As I have told you before, I am the mere agent. I execute my 
instructions, and I am paid for doing so. I think them injudicious, 
but I am not paid for giving any opinion on their merits." 

I was beginning to express my gratitude to my benefactor for 
the great liberality with which I was treated, when Mr. Jaggers 
stopped me. "I am not paid, Pip," said he, coolly, "to carry 
your words to any one ; " and then gathered up his coat-tails, as 



248 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

he had gathered up the subject, and stood frowning at his boots 
as if he suspected them of designs against him. 

After a pause, I hinted : 

"There was a question just now, Mr. Jaggers. which you desired 
me to waive for a moment. I hope I am doing nothing wrong in 
asking it again ? " 

"What is it?" said he. 

I might have known that he would never help me out ; but it 
took me aback to have to shape the question afresh, as if it were 
quite new, " Is it likely," I said, after hesitating, "that my patron, 

the fountain-head you have spoken of, Mr. Jaggers, will soon " 

there I dehcately stopped. 

" Will soon what 1 " asked Mr. Jaggers. " That's no question 
as it stands, you know." 

"Will soon come to London," said I, after casting about for a 
precise form of words, " or summon me anywhere else ? " 

" Now here," replied Mr. Jaggers, fixing me for the first time 
with his dark deep-set eyes, " we must revert to the evening when 
we first encountered one another in your village. What did I tell 
you then, Pip 1 " 

" You told me, Mr. Jaggers, that it might be years hence when 
that person appeared." 

"Just so," said Mr. Jaggers; "that's my answer." 

As we looked full at one another, I felt my breath come quicker 
in my strong desire to get something out of him. And as I felt 
that it came quicker, and as I felt that he saw that it came quicker, 
I felt that I had less chance than ever of getting anything out of him, 

" Do you suppose it will still be years hence, Mr. Jaggers ? " 

Mr. Jaggers shook his head — not in negativing the question, but 
in altogether negativing the notion that he could anyhow be got to 
answer it — and the two horrible casts of the twitched faces looked, 
when my eyes strayed up to them, as if they had come to a crisis in 
their suspended attention, and were going to sneeze. 

" Come ! " said Mr, Jaggers, warming the backs of his legs with 
the backs of his warmed hands, " I'll be plain with you, my friend 
Pip, That's a question I must not be asked. You'U understand 
that, better, when I tell you it's a question that might compromise 
me. Come ! I'll go a Uttle further with you ; I'll say something 
more." 

He bent down so low to frown at his boots, that he was able to 
rub the calves of his legs in the pause he made. 

"When that person discloses," said Mr. Jaggers, straightening 
himself, "you and that person wiU settle your own affairs. When 
that person discloses, my part in this business wiU cease and deter- 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 249 

mine. When that person discloses, it will not be necessary for me 
to know anything about it. And that's all I have got to say." 

We looked at one another until I withdrew my eyes, and looked 
thoughtfully at the floor. From this last speech I derived the notion 
that Miss Havisham, for some reason or no reason, had not taken 
him into her confidence as to her designing me for Estella ; that he 
resented this, and felt a jealousy about it ; or that he really did 
object to that scheme, and would have nothing to do with it. 
When I raised my eyes again, I found that he had been shrewdly 
looking at me all the time, and was doing so still. 

"If that is all you have to say, sir," I remarked, "there can be 
nothing left for me to say." 

He nodded assent, and pulled out his thief-dreaded watch, and 
asked me where I was going to dine 1 I replied, at my own cham- 
bers, with Herbert. As a necessary sequence, I asked him if he 
would favour us with his company, and he promptly accepted the 
invitation. But he insisted on walking home with me, in order 
that I might make no extra preparation for him, and first he had a 
letter or two to write, and (of course) had his hands to wash. So, 
I said I would go into the outer office and talk to Wemmick. 

The fact was, that when the five hundred pounds had come into 
my pocket, a thought had come into my head which had been often 
there before ; and it appeared to me that Wemmick was a good 
person to advise with, concerning such thought. 

He had already locked up his safe, and made preparations for 
going home. He had left his desk, brought out his two greasy 
office candlesticks and stood them in line with the snufi'ers on a 
slab near the door, ready to be extinguished ; he had raked his fire 
low, put his hat and great-coat ready, and was beating himself all 
over the chest with his safe -key as an athletic exercise after busi- 
ness. 

"Mr. Wemmick," said I, "I want to ask your opinion. I am 
very desirous to serve a friend." 

Wemmick tightened his post-office and shook his head, as if his 
opinion were dead against any fatal weakness of that sort. 

" This friend," I pursued, " is trying to get on in commercial life, 
but has no money, and finds it difficult and disheartening to make a 
beginning. Now, I want somehow to help him to a beginning." 

" With money down 1 " said Wemmick, in a tone drier than any 
sawdust. 

" With some money down," I replied, for an uneasy remembrance 
shot across me of that symmetrical bundle of papers at home; "with 
some money down, and perhaps some anticipation of my expecta- 
tions." 



250 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

"Mr. Pip," said Wemmick, "I should like just to run over 
with you on my fingers, if you please, the names of the various 
bridges up as high as Chelsea Reach. Let's see ; there's London, 
one ; Southwark, two ; Blackfriars, three ; Waterloo, four ; West- 
minster, five ; Vauxhall, six." He had checked off each bridge in 
its turn, with the handle of his safe-key on the palm of his hand. 
" There's as many as six, you see, to choose from." 

"I don't understand you," said I. 

"Choose your bridge, Mr. Pip," returned Wemmick, "and take 
a walk upon your bridge, and pitch your money into the Thames 
over the centre arch of your bridge, and you know the end of it. 
Serve a friend with it, and you may know the end of it too - — but 
it's a less pleasant and profitable end." 

I could have posted a newspaper in his mouth, he made it so 
wide after saying this. 

" This is very discouraging," said I. 

" Meant to be so," said Wemmick. 

" Then is it your opinion," I inquired, with some little indigna- 
tion, " that a man should never " 

" — Invest portable property in a friend?" said Wemmick. 
"Certainly he should not. Unless he wants to get rid of the 
friend — and then it becomes a question how much portable prop- 
erty it may be worth to get rid of him." 

"And that," said I, "is your deliberate opinion, Mr. Wemmick?" 

"That," he returned, "is my deliberate opinion in this office." 

"Ah!" said I, pressing him, for I thought I saw him near a 
loophole here ; " but would that be your opinion at Walworth ? " 

"Mr. Pip," he replied with gravity, "Walworth is one place, 
and this office is another. Much as the Aged is one person, and 
Mr. Jaggers is another. They must not be confounded together. 
My Walworth sentiments must be taken at Walworth ; none but 
my official sentiments can be taken in this office." 

"Very well," said I, much relieved, "then I shall look you up 
at Walworth, you may depend upon it." 

" Mr. Pip," he returned, "you will be welcome there, in a pri- 
vate and personal capacity." 

We had held this conversation in a low voice, well knowing my 
guardian's ears to be the sharpest of the sharp. As he now ap- 
peared in his doorway, towelling his hands, Wemmick got on his 
great-coat and stood by to snuff out the candles. We all three went 
into the street together, and from the door-step Wemmick turned 
his way, and Mr. Jaggers and I turned ours. 

I could not help wishing more than once that evening, that Mr. 
Jaggers had had an Aged in Gerrard-street, or a Stinger, or a 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 251 

Something, or a Somebody, to unbend his brows a little. It was 
an uncomfortable consideration on a twenty-first birthday, that 
coming of age at all seemed hardly worth while in such a guarded 
and suspicious world as he made of it. He was a thousand times 
better informed and cleverer than Wemmick, and yet I would a 
thousand times rather have had Wemmick to dinner. And Mr. 
Jaggers made not me alone intensely melancholy, because, after he 
was gone, Herbert said of himself, with his eyes fixed on the fire, 
that he thought he must liave committed a felony and forgotten 
the details of it, he felt so dejected and guilty. 



CHAPTER XXXVII. 

Deeming Sunday the best day for taking Mr. Wemmick's 
Walworth sentiments, I devoted the next ensuing Sunday afternoon 
to a pil^image to the Castle. On arriving before the battlements, 
I found the Union Jack flying and the drawbridge up, but un- 
deterred by this show of defiance and resistance, I rang at the gate, 
and was admitted in a most pacific manner by the Aged. 

"My son, sir," said the old man, after securing the drawbridge, 
" rather had it in his mind that you might happen to drop in, and 
he left word that he would soon be home from his afternoon's 
walk. He is very regular in his walks, is my son. Very regular 
in everything, is my son." 

I nodded at the old gentleman as Wemmick himself might have 
nodded, and we went in and sat down by the fireside. 

"You made acquaintance with my son, sir," said the old man, 
in his chirping way, while he warmed his hands at the blaze, " at 
his oflBce, I expect ? " I nodded. " Hah ! I have heerd that my 
son is a wonderful hand at his business, sir?" I nodded hard. 
"Yes; so they tell me. His business is the Law?" I nodded 
harder. " Which makes it more surprising in my son," said the old 
man, " for he was not brought up to the Law, but to the Wine- 
Coopering." 

Curious to know how the old gentleman stood informed concern- 
ing the reputation of Mr. Jaggers, I roared that name at him. He 
threw me into the greatest confusion by laughing heartily and 
replying in a very sprightly manner, "No, to be sure; you're 
right." And to this hour I have not the faintest notion of what 
he meant, or what joke he thought I had made. 

As I could not sit there nodding at him perpetually, without 
making some other attempt to interest him, I shouted an inquiry 



252 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

whether his own calling in life had been "the Wine-Coopering." 
By dint of straining that term out of myself several times and 
tapping the old gentleman on the chest to associate it with him, I 
at last succeeded in making my meaning understood. 

" No," said the old gentleman ; " the warehousing, the warehous- 
ing. First, over yonder ; " he appeared to mean up the chimney, 
but I believe he intended to refer me to Liverpool; "and then in 
the City of London here. However, having an infirmity — for I 
am hard of hearing, sir " 

I expressed in pantomime the greatest astonishment. 

" — Yes, hard of hearing ; having that infirmity coming upon 
me, my son he went into the Law, and he took charge of me, and 
he by little and little made out this elegant and beautiful property. 
But returning to what you said, you know," pursued the old man, 
again laughing heartily, "what I say is, No, to be sure; you're 
right." 

I was modestly wondering whether my utmost ingenuity would 
have enabled me to say anything that would have amused him 
half as much as this imaginary pleasantly, when I was startled by 
a sudden click in the wall on one side of the chimney, and the 
ghostly tumbling open of a little wooden flap with " John " upon 
it. The old man, following my eyes, cried with great triumph, 
" My son's come home ! " and we both went out to the draw- 
bridge. 

It was worth any money to see Wemmick waving a salute to 
me from the other side of the moat, when we might have shaken 
hands across it with the greatest ease. The Aged was so delighted 
to work the drawbridge, that I made no offer to assist him, but 
stood quiet until Wemmick had come across, and had presented 
me to Miss Skiffins : a lady by whom he was accompanied. 

Miss Skiffins was of a wooden appearance, and was, like her 
escort, in the post-office branch of the service. She might have 
been some two or three years younger than Wemmick, and I judged 
her to stand possessed of portable property. The cut of her dress 
from the waist upward, both before and behind, made her figure 
very like a boy's kite ; and I might have pronounced her gown a 
little too decidedly orange, and her gloves a little too intensely 
green. But she seemed to be a good sort of fellow, and showed a 
high regard for the Aged. I was not long in discovering that she 
was a frequent visitor at the Castle ; for, on our going in, and my 
complimenting AVemmick on his ingenious contrivance for announc- 
ing himself to the Aged, he begged me to give my attention for a 
moment to the other side of the chimney, and disappeared. Pres- 
ently another click came, and another little door tumbled open 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 253 

with " Miss Skiffins " on it ; then Miss Skiffins shut up and John 
tumbled open ; then Miss Skiffins and John both tumbled open 
together, and finally shut up together. On Wemmick's return 
from working these mechanical appliances, I expressed the great 
admiration with which I regarded them, and he said, " Well, you 
know, they're both pleasant and useful to the Aged. And by 
George, sir, it's a thing worth mentioning, that of all the people 
who come to this gate, the secret of those pulls is only known to 
the Aged, Miss Skiffins, and me ! " 

"And Mr. Wemmick made them," added Miss Skiffins, "with 
his own hands out of his own head." 

While Miss Skiffins was taking off her bonnet (she retained her 
green gloves during the evening as an outward and ^dsible sign that 
there was company), Wemmick invited me to take a walk with him 
round the property, and see how the island looked in winter-time. 
Thinking that he did this to give me an opportunity of taking his 
Walworth sentiments, I seized the opportunity as soon as we were 
out of the Castle. 

Having thought of the matter with care, I approached my sub- 
ject as if I had never hinted at it before. I informed Wemmick 
that I was anxious in behalf of Herbert Pocket, and I told him how 
we had first met, and how we had fought. I glanced at Herbert's 
home, and at his character, and at his having no means but such 
as he was dependent on his father for : those, uncertain and un- 
punctual. I alluded to the advantages I had derived in my first 
rawness and ignorance from his society, and I confessed that I 
feared I had but ill repaid them, and that he might have done 
better without me and my expectations. Keeping Miss Havisham 
in the background at a great distance, I still hinted at the possi- 
bility of my having competed with him in his prospects, and at the 
certainty of his possessing a generous soul, and being far above 
any mean distrusts, retaliations, or designs. For all these reasons 
(I told Wemmick), and because he was my young companion and 
friend, and I had a great affection for him, I wished my own good 
fortune to reflect some rays upon him, and therefore I sought ad- 
vice from Wemmick's experience and knowledge of men and affairs, 
how I could best try with my resources to help Herbert to some 
present income — say of a hundred a year, to keep him in good 
hope and heart — and gradually to buy him on to some small 
partnership. I begged Wemmick, in conclusion, to understand 
that my help must always be rendered without Herbert's knowl- 
edge or suspicion, and that there was no one else in the world with 
whom I could advise. I wound up by laying my hand upon his 
shoulder, and saying "I can't help confiding in you; though I 



254 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

know it must be troublesome to you ; but that is your fault ; in 
having ever brought me here." 

Wemmick was silent for a little while, and then said with a kind 
of start, " Well, you know, Mr. Pip, I must tell you one thing. 
This is devihsh good of you." 

"Say you'll help me to be good then," said I. 

" Ecod," replied Wemmick, shaking his head, " that's not my 
trade." 

" Nor is this your trading-place," said I. 

"You are right," he returned. "You hit the nail on the head. 
Mr. Pip, I'll put on my considering cap, and I think all you want 
to do may be done by degrees. Skiffins (that's her brother) is an 
accountant and agent. I'll look him up and go to work for you." 

" I thank you ten thousand times." 

"On the contrary," said he, "I thank you, for though we are 
strictly in our private and personal capacity, still it may be men- 
tioned that there are Newgate cobwebs about, and it brushes 
them away," 

After a little further conversation to the same effect, we returned 
into the Castle where we found Miss Skiffins preparing tea. The 
responsible duty of making the toast was delegated to the Aged, 
and that excellent old gentleman was so intent upon it that he 
seemed to be in some danger of melting his eyes. It was no 
nominal meal that we were going to make, but a vigorous reality. 
The Aged prepared such a haystack of buttered toast, that I could 
scarcely see him over it as it simmered on an iron stand hooked 
on to the top-bar ; while Miss Skiffins brewed such a jorum of tea, 
that the pig in the back premises became strongly excited, and 
repeatedly expressed his desire to participate in the entertainment. 

The flag had been struck, and the gun had been fired, at the 
right moment of time, and I felt as snugly cut off" from the rest of 
Walworth as if the moat were thirty feet wide by as many 
deep. Nothing disturbed the tranquillity of the Castle, but the 
occasional tumbling open of John and Miss Skiffins : which little 
doors were a prey to some spasmodic infirmity that made me 
sympathetically uncomfortable until I got used to it. I inferred 
from the methodical nature of Miss Skiffins's arrangements that 
she made tea there every Sunday night ; and I rather suspected 
that a classic brooch she wore, representing the profile of an 
undesirable female with a very straight nose and a very new moon, 
was a piece of portable property that had been given her by 
Wemmick. 

We ate the whole of the toast, and drank tea in proportion, 
and it was delightful to see how warm and greasy we all got after 



1 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 255 

it. The Aged, especially, might have passed for some clean old 
chief of a savage tribe, just oiled. After a short pause of repose, 
Miss Skiffins — in the absence of the little servant, who, it seemed, 
retired to the bosom of her femily on Sunday afternoons — washed 
up the tea-things, in a trifling lady-like amateur manner that 
compromised none of us. Then, she put on her gloves again, and 
we drew round the fire, and Wemmick said, "Now, Aged Parent, 
tip us the paper." 

Wemmick explained to me while the Aged got his spectacles 
out, that this was according to custom, and that it gave the old 
gentleman infinite satisfaction to read the news aloud. " I won't 
offer an apology," said Wemmick, "for he isn't capable of many 
pleasures — are you. Aged P. 1 " 

"All right, John, all right," returned the old man, seeing him- 
self spoken to. 

" Only tip him a nod every now and then when he looks off his 
paper," said Wemmick, " and he'll be as happy as a king. We 
are all attention. Aged One." 

"All right, John, all right ! " returned the cheerful old man : so 
busy and so pleased, that it really was quite charming. 

The Aged's reading reminded me of the classes at Mr. Wopsle's 
great-aunt's, with the pleasanter peculiarity that it seemed to come 
through a keyhole. As he wanted the candles close to him, and 
as he was always on the verge of putting either his head or the 
newspaper into them, he required as much watching as a powder- 
mill. But Wemmick was equally untiring and gentle in his vigi- 
lance, and the Aged read on, quite unconscious of his many rescues. 
Whenever he looked at us, we all expressed the greatest interest 
and amazement, and nodded until he resumed again. 

As Wemmick and Miss Skiffins sat side by side, and as I sat in 
a shado^^ corner, I observed a slow and gradual elongation of 
Mr. Wemmick's mouth, powerfully suggestive of his slowly and 
gradually stealing his arm round Miss Skiffins's waist. In course 
of time I saw his hand appear on the other side of Miss Skiffins ; 
but at that moment Miss Skiffins neatly stopped him with the 
green glove, unwound his arm again as if it were an article of 
dress, and with the greatest deliberation laid it on the table before 
her. Miss Skiffins's composure while she did this was one of the 
most remarkable sights I have ever seen, and if I could have 
thought the act consistent with abstraction of mind, I should have 
deemed that Miss Skiffins performed it mechanically. 

By-and-bye, I noticed Wemmick's arm beginning to disappear 
again, and gradually fading' out of view. Shortly afterwards, his 
mouth began to widen again. After an interval of suspense on 



256 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

my part that was quite enthralling and almost painful, I saw his 
hand appear on the other side of Miss Skiffins. Instantly, Miss 
Skiffins stopped it ^vith the neatness of a placid boxer, took off 
that girdle or cestus as before, and laid it on the table. Taking 
the table to represent the path of virtue, I am justified in stating 
that during the whole time of the Aged's reading, Wemmick's arm 
was straying from the path of virtue and being recalled to it by 
Miss Skiffins. 

At last the Aged read himself into a light slumber. This was 
the time for Wemmick to produce a little kettle, a tray of glasses, 
and a black bottle with a porcelain-topped cork, representing some 
clerical dignitary of a rubicund and social aspect. With the aid 
of these appliances we all had something warm to drink : includ- 
ing the Aged, who was soon awake again. Miss Skiffins mixed, 
and I observed that she and Wemmick drank out of one glass. 
Of course I knew better than to offer to see Miss Skiffins home, 
and under the circumstances I thought I had best go first : which 
I did, taking a cordial leave of the Aged, and having passed a 
pleasant evening. 

Before a week was out, I received a note from Wemmick, dated 
Walworth, stating that he hoped he had made some advance in 
that matter appertaining to our private and personal capacities, 
and that he would be glad if I could come and see him again 
upon it. So, I went out to Walworth again, and yet again, and 
yet again, and I saw him by appointment in the City several times, 
but never held any communication -with him on the subject in or 
near Little Britain. The upshot was, that we found a worthy 
young merchant or shipping-broker, not long established in busi- 
ness, who wanted intelligent help, and who wanted capital, and 
who in due course of time and receipt would want a partner. Be- 
tween him and me, secret articles were signed of which Herbert 
was the subject, and I paid him half of my five hundred pounds 
down, and engaged for sundry other payments : some, to fall due 
at certain dates out of my income : some contingent on my coming 
into my property. Miss Skiffins's brother conducted the negotia- 
tion. Wemmick pervaded it throughout, but never appeared in it. 

The whole business was so cleverly managed, that Herbert had 
not the least suspicion of my hand being in it. I never shall for- 
get the radiant face with which he came home one afternoon, and 
told me as a mighty piece of news, of his having fallen in with one 
Clarriker (the young merchant's name), and of Clarriker's having 
shown an extraordinaiy inclination towards him, and of his belief 
that the opening had come at last. Day by day as his hopes grew 
stronger and his face brighter, he must have thought me a more 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 257 

and more affectionate friend, for I had the greatest difficulty in 
restraining my tears of triumph when I saw him so happy. 

At length, the thing being done, and he having that day entered 
Clarriker's House, and he having talked to me for a whole evening 
in a flush of pleasure and success, I did really cry in good earnest 
when I went to bed, to think that my expectations had done some 
good to somebody. 

A great event in my life, the turning point of my life, now opens 
on my view. But, before I proceed to narrate it, and before I pass 
on to all the changes it involved, I must give one chapter to Estella. 
It is not much to give to the theme that so long filled my heart. 



CHAPTER XXXVIII. • 

If that staid old house near the Green at Richmond should ever 
come to be haunted when I am dead, it will be haunted, surely, by 
my ghost. the many, many nights and days through which the 
unquiet spirit within me haunted that house when Estella lived 
there ! Let my body be where it would, my spirit was always 
wandering, wandering, wandering about that house. 

The lady with whom Estella was placed, Mrs. Brandley by name, 
was a widow, with one daughter several years older than Estella. 
The mother looked young and the daughter looked old ; the mother's 
complexion was pink, and the daughter's was yellow ; the mother 
set up for frivolity, and the daughter for theology. They were in 
what is called a good position, and visited, and were visited by, 
numbers of people. Little, if any, community of feeling subsisted 
between them and Estella, but the understanding was established 
that they were necessary to her, and that she Avas necessary to them. 
Mrs. Brandley had been a friend of Miss Havisham's before the time 
of her seclusion. 

In Mrs. Brandley's house and out of Mrs. Brandley's house, I 
suffered every kind and degree of torture that Estella could cause 
me. The nature of my relations with her, which placed me on 
terms of familiarity without placing me on terms of favour, con- 
duced to my distraction. She made use of me to tease other ad- 
mirers, and she turned the very familiarity between herself and 
me, to the account of putting a constant slight on my devotion to 
her. If I had been her secretary, steward, half-brother, poor rela- 
tion — if I had been a younger brother of her appointed husband — 
I could not have seemed to myself, further from my hopes when I 
was nearest to her. The privilege of calling her by her name- and 



258 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

hearing her call me by mine, became under the circumstances an 
aggravation of my trials ; and while I think it likely that it almost 
maddened her other lovers, I knew too certainly that it almost 
maddened me. 

She had admirers without end. No doubt my jealousy made an 
admirer of every one who went near her ; but there were more than 
enough of them without that. 

I saw her often at Richmond, I heard of her often in town, and 
I used often to take her and the Brandleys on the water; there 
were picnics, fete days, plays, operas, concerts, parties, all sorts of 
pleasures, through which I pursued her — and they were all mis- 
eries to me. I never had one hour's happiness in her society, and 
yet my mind all round the four-and-twenty hours was harping on 
the happiness of having her with me unto death. 

Throughout this part of our intercourse — and it lasted, as will 
presently be seen, for what I then thought a long time — she 
habitually reverted to that tone which expressed that our associa- 
tion was forced upon us. There were other times when she would 
come to a sudden check in this tone and in all her many tones, and 
would seem to pity me. 

" Pij), Pip," she said one evening, coming to such a check, when 
we sat apart at a darkening window of the house in Richmond ; 
" will you never take warning ? " 

" Of what ? " 

" Of me." 

"Warning not to be attracted by you, do you mean, Estella?" 

"Do I mean! If you don't know what I mean, you are 
blind." 

I should have replied that Love was commonly reputed blind, 
but for the reason that I always was restrained — and this was 
not the least of my miseries — by a feeling that it was ungenerous 
to press myself upon her, when she knew that she could not choose 
but obey Miss Havisham. My ckead always was, that this knowl- 
edge on her part laid me under a heavy disadvantage with her pride, 
and made me the subject of a rebellious struggle in her bosom. 

"At any rate," said I, "I have no warning given me just now, 
for you wrote to me to come to you, this time." 

"That's true," said EsteUa, with a cold careless smile that 
always chilled me. 

After looking at the t^vilight without, for a little while, she went 
on to say : 

"The time has come round when Miss Havisham wishes to have 
me for a day at Satis. You are to take me there, and bring me 
back, if you will. She would rather I did not travel alone, and 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 269 

objects to receiving my maid, for she has a sensitive horror of 
being talked of by such people. Can you take me ? " 

" Can I take you, Estella ! " 

" You can then ? The day after to-morrow, if you please. You 
are to pay all charges out of my purse. You hear the condition of 
your going?" 

"And must obey," said I. 

This was all the preparation I received for that visit, or for 
others like it : Miss Havisham never wrote to me, nor had I ever 
so much as seen her handwriting. We went down on the. next day 
but one, and we found her in the room where I had first beheld 
her, and it is needless to add that there was no change in Satis 
House. 

She was even more dreadfully fond of Estella than she had been 
when I last saw them together ; I repeat the word advisedly, for 
there was something positively dreadful in the energy of her looks 
and embraces. She hung upon Estella's beauty, hung upon her 
words, hung upon her gestures, and sat mumbling her own trem- 
bling fingers while she looked at her, as though she were devour- 
ing the beautiful creature she had reared. 

From Estella she looked at me, with a searching glance that 
seemed to pry into mj heart and probe its wounds. " How does 
she use you, Pip, how does she use you ? " she asked me again, with 
her witch-like eagerness, even in Estella's hearing. But, when we 
sat by her flickering fire at night, she was most weird ; for then, 
keeping Estella's hand drawn through her arm and clutched in 
her own hand, she extorted from her by dint of referring back to 
what Estella had told her in her regular letters, the names and 
conditions of the men whom she had fascinated; and as Miss 
Havisham dwelt upon this roll, with the intensity of a mind 
mortally hurt and diseased, she sat with her other hand on her 
crutch stick, and her chin on that, and her wan bright eyes glaring 
at me, a very spectre. 

I saw in this, wretched though it made me, and bitter the sense 
of dependence, even of degradation, that it awakened — I saw in 
this, that Estella was set to wreak Miss Havisham's revenge on 
men, and that she was not to be given to me until she had gratified 
it for a term. I saw in this, a reason for her being beforehand 
.assigned to me. Sending her out to attract and torment and do 
mischief, Miss Havisham sent her with the malicious assurance that 
she was beyond the reach of all admirers, and that all who staked 
upon that cast were secured to lose. I saw in this, that I, too, 
was tormented by a perversion of ingenuity, even while the prize 
was reserved for me. I saw in this, the reason for my being 



260 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

staved off so long, and the reason for my late guardian's declining 
to commit himself to the formal knowledge of such a scheme. In 
a word, I saw in this, Miss Havisham as I had her then and there 
before my eyes, and always had had her before my eyes ; and I 
saw in this, the distinct shadow of the darkened and unhealthy 
house in which her life was hidden from the sun. 

The candles that lighted that room of hers were placed in 
sconces on the wall. They were high from the ground, and they 
burnt with the steady dulness of artificial light in air that is 
seldom renewed. As I looked round at them, and at the pale 
gloom they made, and at the stopped clock, and at the withered 
articles of bridal dress upon the table and the ground, and at her 
own awful figure with its ghostly reflection thrown large by the 
fire upon the ceiling and the wall, I saw in everything tlie construc- 
tion that my mind had come to, repeated and thrown back to me. 
My thoughts passed into the great room across the landing where 
the table was spread, and I saw it written, as it were, in the falls 
of the cobwebs from the centre-piece, in the crawlings of the 
spiders on the cloth, in the tracks of the mice as they betook their 
little quickened hearts behind the panels, and in the gropings 
and pausings of the beetles on the floor. 

It happened on the occasion of this visit that some sharp words 
arose between Estella and Miss Havisham. It was the first time 
I had ever seen them opposed. 

We were seated by the fire, as just now described, and Miss 
Havisham still had Estella's arm drawn through her own, and still 
clutched Estella's hand in hers, when Estella gradually began to 
detach herself. She had shown a proud impatience more than 
once before, and had rather endured that fierce aff'ection than 
accepted or returned it. 

" What ! " said Miss Havisham, flashing her eyes upon her, 
"are you tired of me?" 

"Only a little tired of myself," replied Estella, disengaging her 
arm, and moving to the great chimney-piece, where she stood 
looking down at the fire. 

" Speak the truth, you ingrate ! " cried Miss Havisham, pas- 
sionately striking her stick upon the floor; "you are tired of 
me." 

Estella looked at her with perfect composure, and again looked 
down at the fire. Her graceful figure and her beautiful face 
expressed a self-possessed indiff'erence to the wild heat of the other, 
that was almost cruel. 

"You stock and stone!" exclaimed Miss Havisham. "You 
cold, cold heart ! " 



262 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

" What ! " said Estella, preserving her attitude of indifference 
as she leaned against the great chimney-piece and only moving her 
eyes ; "do you reproach me for being cold ? You ? " 

" Are you not ? " was the fierce retort. 

" You should know," said Estella. " I am what you have made 
me. Take all the praise, take all the blame ; take all the success, 
take all the failure ; in short, take me." 

"0, look at her, look at her ! " cried Miss Havisham, bitterly; 
"look at her, so hard and thankless, on the hearth where she was 
reared ! Where I took her into this wretched breast when it was 
first bleeding from its stabs, and where I have lavished years of 
tenderness upon her ! " 

"At least T was no party to the compact," said Estella, "for if 
I could walk and speak, when it was made, it was as much as I 
could do. But what would you have ? You have been very good 
to me, and I owe everything to you. What would you have 1 " 

"Love," replied the other. 

"You have it." 

"I have not," said Miss Havisham. 

"Mother by adoption," retorted Estella, never departing from 
the easy grace of her attitude, never raising her voice as the other 
did, never yielding either to anger or tenderness, "Mother by 
adoption, I have said that I owe everything to you. All I possess 
is freely yours. All that you have given me, is at your command 
to have again. Beyond that, I have nothing. And if you ask me 
to give you what you never gave me, my gratitude and duty can- 
not do impossibilities." 

" Did I never give her love ! " cried Miss Havisham, turning 
wildly to me. " Did I never give her a burning love, inseparable 
from jealousy at all times, and from sharp pain, while she speaks 
thus to me ! Let her call me mad, let her call me mad ! " 

"Why should I call you mad," returned Estella, "I, of all 
people? Does any one live, who knows what set purposes you 
have, half as well as I do ? Does any one live, who knows what 
a steady memory you have, half as well as I do ? I who have sat on 
this same hearth on the little stool that is even now beside you 
there, learning your lessons and looking up into your face, when 
your face was strange and frightened me ! " 

" Soon forgotten ! " moaned Miss Havisham. " Times soon 
forgotten ! " 

"No, not forgotten," retorted Estella. "Not forgotten, but 
treasured up in my memory. When have you found me false to 
your teaching? When have you found me unmindful of your 
lessons? When have you found me giving admission here," she 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 263 

touched her bosom with her hand, "to anything that you excluded? 
Be just to me." 

" So proud, so proud ! " moaned Miss Havisham, pushing away 
her grey hair with both her hands. 

" Who taught me to be proud ? " returned Estella. " Who 
praised me when I learnt my lesson?" 

" So hard, so hard ! " moaned Miss Havisham, with her former 
action. 

"Who taught me to be hard?" returned Estella. "Who 
praised me when I learnt my lesson?" 

" But to be proud and hard to me I " Miss Havisham quite 
shrieked, as she stretched out her arms. " Estella, Estella, Estella, 
to be proud and hard to me ! " 

Estella looked at her for a moment with a kind of calm wonder, 
but was not otherwise disturbed ; when the moment was past, she 
looked down at the fire again. 

"I cannot think," said Estella, raising her eyes after a silence, 
" why you should be so unreasonable when I come to see you after 
a separation. I have never forgotten your wrongs and their 
causes. I have never been unfaithful to you or your schooling. 
I have never shown any weakness that I can charge myself with." 

"Would it be weakness to return my love?" exclaimed Miss 
Havisham. " But yes, yes, she would call it so ! " 

"I begin to think," said Estella, in a musing way, after another 
moment of calm wonder, "that I almost understand how this 
comes about. If you had brought up your adopted daughter 
wholly in the dark confinement of these rooms, and had never let 
her know that there was such a thing as the daylight by which she 
has never once seen your face — if you had done that, and then, for 
a purpose, had wanted her to understand the daylight and know 
all about it, you would have been disappointed and angry ? " 

Miss Havisham, with her head in her hands, sat making a 
low moaning, and swaying herself on her chair, but gave no 
answer. 

"Or," said Estella, " — which is a nearer case — if you had 
taught her, from the dawn of her intelHgence, with your utmost 
energy and might, that there was such a thing as daylight, but 
that it was made to be her enemy and destroyer, and she must 
always turn against it, for it had blighted you and would else 
blight her ; — if you had done this, and then, for a purpose, had 
wanted her to take naturally to the daylight and she could not do 
it, you would have been disappointed and angry ? " 

Miss Havisham sat listening (or it seemed so, for I could not 
see her face), but still made no answer. 



264 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

"So," said Estella, "I must be taken as I have been made. 
The success is not mine, the faikire is not mine, but the two 
together make me." 

Miss Havisham had settled down, I hardly knew hovr, upon 
the floor, among the faded bridal relics with which it was strewTi. 
I took advantage of the moment — I had sought one from the 
first — to leave the room, after beseeching Estella's attention to 
her with a movement of my hand. When I left, Estella was yet 
standing by the great chimney-piece, just as she had stood through- 
out. Miss Havisham's grey hair was all adrift upon the gi'ound, 
among the other bridal wrecks, and was a miserable sight to see. 

It was with a depressed heart that I walked in the starlight for 
an hour and more, about the courtyard, and about the brewery, 
and about the ruined garden. When I at last took courage to 
return to the room, I found Estella sitting at Miss Havisham's 
knee, taking up some stitches in one of those old articles of dress 
that were dropping to pieces, and of which I have often been 
reminded since by the faded tatters of old banners that I have 
seen hanging up in cathedi'als. Afterwards, Estella and I played 
at cards, as of yore — only we were skilful now, and played French 
games — and so the evening wore away, and I went to bed. 

I lay in that separate building across the courtyard. It was 
the first time I had ever lain down to rest in Satis House, and 
sleep refused to come near me. A thousand Miss Ha^ishams 
haunted me. She was on this side of my pill^\v, on that, at 
the head of the bed, at the foot, behind the half-opened door of the 
dressing-room, in the dressing-room, in the room overhead, in the 
room beneath — everywhere. At last, when the night was slow 
to creep on towards two o'clock, I felt that I absolutely could no 
longer bear the place as a place to lie down in, and that I must 
get up. I therefore got up and put on my clothes, and went out 
across the yard into the long stone passage, designing to giiin the 
outer courtyard and walk there for the relief of my mind. But, 
I was no sooner in the passage than I extinguished my candle ; 
for, I saw Miss Havisham going along it in a ghostly manner, 
making a low cry. I followed her at a distance, and saw her go 
up the staircase. She carried a bare candle in her hand, which 
she had probably taken from one of the sconces in her own room, 
and was a most unearthly object by its light. Standing at the 
bottom of the staircase, I felt the mildewed air of the feast-chamber, 
without seeing her open the door, and I heard her walking there, 
and so across into her own room, and so across again into that, 
never ceasing the low cry. After a time, I tried in the dark both 
to get out and to go back, but I could do neither until some 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 265 

streaks of day strayed in and showed me where to lay my hands. 
During the whole interval, whenever I went to the bottom of 
tlie staircase, I heard her footstep, saw her candle pass above, 
and heard her ceaseless low cry. 

Before we left next day, there was no revival of the difference 
between her and Estella, nor was it ever revived on any similar 
ciC'casion ; and there were four similar occasions, to the best of my 
remembrance. Nor, did Miss Havisham's manner towards Estella 
in anywise change, except that I believed it to have something 
like fear infused among its former characteristics. 

It is impossible to turn this leaf of my life without putting 
Bentley Drammle's name upon it ; or I would, very gladly. 

On a certain occasion when the Finches were assembled in force, 
and when good feeling was being promoted in the usual manner 
by nobody's agreeing with anybody else, the presiding Finch called 
the Grove to order, forasmuch as Mr. Drummle had not yet 
toasted a lady ; which, according to the solemn constitution of the 
society, it was the brute's turn to do that day. I thought I saw 
him leer in an ugly way at me while the decanters were going 
round, but as there was no love lost between us, that might easily 
be. What was my indignant surprise when he called upon the 
company to pledge him to " Estella ! " 

"Estella who? "said I. 

" Never you mind," retorted Drummle. 

" Estella of where 1 " said I. " You are bound to say of where." 
Which he was, as a Finch. 

" Of Richmond, gentlemen," said Drummle, putting me out of 
the question, " and a peerless beauty." 

Much he knew about peerless beauties, a mean miserable idiot ! 
I whispered Herbert. 

" I know that lady," said Herbert, across the table, when the 
toast had been honoured. 

" Bo you 1 " said Drummle. 

" And so do I," I added with a scarlet face. 

" Do you ? " said Drummle. " Oh, Lord ! " 

This was the only retort — except glass or crockery — that the 
heavy creature was capable of making ; but, I became as highly 
incensed by it as if it had been barbed with wit, and I immediately 
rose in my place and said that I could not but regard it as being 
like the honourable Finch's impudence to come down to that 
Grove — we always talked about coming down to that Grove, as 
a neat Parliamentary turn of expression — down to that Grove, 
proposing a lady of whom he knew nothing. Mr. Drummle upon 
this, starting up, demanded what I meant by that ? W^hereupon, 



266 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

I made him the extreme reply that I believed he knew where I 
was to be found. 

Whether it was possible in a Christian country to get on without 
blood, after this, was a question on which the Finches were divided. 
The debate upon it grew so lively, indeed, that at least six more hon- 
ourable members told six more, during the discussion, that they 
believed they knew where they were to be found. However, it was 
decided at last (the Grove being a Court of Honour) that if Mr. 
Drummle would bring never so slight a certificate from the lady, 
importing that he had the honour of her acquaintance, Mr. Pip 
must express his regret, as a gentleman and a Finch, for " having 
been betrayed into a warmth which." Next day was appointed for 
the production (lest our honour should take cold from delay), and 
next day Drummle appeared with a polite little avowal in Estella's 
hand, that she had had the honour of dancing with him several 
times. This left me no course but to regret that I had been 
"betrayed into a warmth which," and on the whole to repudiate, 
as untenable, the idea that I was to be found anywhere. Drummle 
and I then sat snorting at one another for an hour, while the 
Grove engaged in indiscriminate contradiction, and finally the 
promotion of good feeling was declared to have gone ahead at an 
amazing rate. 

I tell this lightly, but it was no light thing to me. For, I can- 
not adequately express what pain it gave me to think that Estella 
should show any favour to a contemptible, clumsy, sulky booby, so 
very far below the average. To the present moment, I believe it 
to have been referable to some pure fire of generosity and disinter- 
estedness in my love for her, that I could not endure the thought 
of her stooping to that hound. No doubt I should have been 
miserable whomsoever she had favoured; but a worthier object 
would have caused me a different kind and degree of distress. 

It was easy for me to find out, and I did soon find out, that 
Drummle had begun to follow her closely, and that she allowed 
him to do it. A little while, and he was always in pursuit of her, 
and he and I crossed one another every day. He held on, in a dull 
persistent way, and Estella held him on ; now with encouragement, 
now with discouragement, now almost flattering him, now openly 
despising him, now knowing him very weU, now scarcely remem- 
bering who he was. 

The Spider, as Mr. Jaggers had called him, was used to lying in 
wait, however, and had the patience of his tribe. Added to that, 
he had a blockhead confidence in his money and in his family great- 
ness, which sometimes did him good service — almost taking the 
place of concentration and determined purpose. So, the Spider, 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 267 

doggedly watching Estella, outwatched many brighter insects, and 
would often uncoil himself and drop at the right nick of time. 

At a certain Assembly Ball at Richmond (there used to be 
Assembly Balls at most places then), where Estella had outshone 
all other beauties, this blundering Drummle so hung about her, 
and with so much toleration on her part, that I resolved to speak 
to her concerning him. I took the next opportunity : which was 
when she was waiting for Mrs. Brandley to take her home, and 
was sitting apart among some flowers, ready to go. I was with 
her, for I almost always accompanied them to and from such 
places. 

" Are you tired, Estella ? " 

"Rather, Pip." 

''You should be." 

"Say, rather, I should not be; for I have my letter to Satis 
House to write, before I go to sleep." 

" Recounting to-night's triumph? " said I. " Surely a veiy poor 
one, Estella." 

"What do you mean ? I didn't know there had been any." 

"Estella," said I, "do look at that fellow in the corner yonder, 
who is looking over here at us." 

" Why should I look at him ? " returned Estella, with her eyes 
on me instead. " What is there in that fellow in the corner 
yonder — to use your words — that I need look at ? " 

"Indeed, that is the very question I want to ask you," said I. 
"For he has been hovering about you all night." 

"Moths, and all sorts of ugly creatures," replied Estella, with a 
glance towards him, " hover about a lighted candle. Can the candle 
help it?" 

" No," I returned : " but cannot the Estella help it ? " 

" Well ! " said she, laughing after a moment, " perhaps. Yes. 
Anything you like." 

" But, Estella, do hear me speak. It makes me wretched that 
you should encourage a man so generally despised as Drummle. 
You know he is despised." 

"Well? "said she. 

" You know he is as ungainly within as without. A deficient, 
ill-tempered, lowering, stupid fellow." 

"Well? "said she. 

"You know he has nothing to recommend him but money, 
and a ridiculous roU of addle-headed predecessors ; now, don't 
you?" 

" Well ? " said she again ; and each time she said it, she opened 
her lovely eyes the wider. 



268 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

To overcome the difficulty of getting past that monosyllable, I 
took it from her, and said, repeating it with emphasis, " Well ! 
Then, that is why it makes me wretched." 

Now, if I could have believed that she favoured Drummle with 
any idea of making me — me — wretched, I should have been in 
better heart about it ; but in that habitual way of hers, she put 
me so entirely out of the question, that I could believe nothing of 
the kind. 

"Pip," said Estella, casting her glance over the room, "don't 
be foolish about its effect on you. It may have its effect on 
others, and may be meant to have. It's not worth discussing." 

"Yes, it is," said I, "because I cannot bear that people should 
say, ' she throws away her graces and attractions on a mere boor, 
the lowest in the crowd.' " 

"I can bear it," said Estella. 

" Oh ! don't be so proud, Estella, and so inflexible." 

" Calls me proud and inflexible in this breath ! " said Estella, 
opening her hands. "And in his last breath reproached me for 
stooping to a boor ! " 

" There is no doubt you do," said I, something hurriedly, " for I 
have seen you give him looks and smiles this very night, such as 
you never give to — me." 

"Do you want me then," said Estella, turning suddenly with 
a fixed and serious, if not angry look, "to deceive and entrap 
you?" 

" Do you deceive and entrap him, Estella ? " 

" Yes, and many others — all of them but you. Here is Mrs. 
Brandley. I'll say no more." 

And now that I have given the one chapter to the theme that 
so filled my heart, and so often made it ache and ache again, I 
pass on, unhindered, to the event that had impended over me 
longer yet ; the event that had begun to be prepared for, before I 
knew that the world held Estella, and in the days w^hen her baby 
intelligence was receiving its first distortions from Miss Havisham's 
wasting hands. 

In the Eastern story, the heavy slab that was to fall on the bed 
of state in the flush of conquest was slowly wrought out of the 
quarry, the tunnel for the rope to hold it in its place was slowly 
carried through the leagues of rock, the slab was slowly raised 
and fitted in the roof, the rope was rove to it and slowly taken 
through the miles of hollow to the great iron ring. All being 
made ready with much labour, and the hour come, the sultan was 
aroused in the dead of the night, and the sharpened axe that was 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 269 

to sever the rope from the great iron ring was put into his hand, 
and he struck with it, and the rope parted and rushed away, and 
the ceiling fell. So, in my case ; all the work, near and afar, that 
tended to the end, had been accomplished; and in an instant the 
blow was struck, and the roof of my stronghold dropped upon me. 



CHAPTER XXXIX. 

I WAS three-and-twenty years of age. Not another word had I 
heard to enlighten me on the subject of my expectations, and my 
twenty-third birthday was a week gone. We had left Barnard's 
Inn more than a year, and lived in the Temple. Our chambers 
were in Grarden-court, down by the river. 

Mr. Pocket and I had for some time parted company as to our 
original relations, though we continued on the best terms. Not- 
withstanding my inability to settle to anything — -which I hope 
arose out of the restless and incomplete tenure on which I held 
my means — I had a taste for reading, and read regularly so many 
hours a day. That matter of Herbert's was still progressing, and 
everything with me was as I have brought it down to the close of 
the last preceding chapter. 

Business had taken Herbert on a journey to Marseilles. I was 
alone, and had a dull sense of being alone. Dispirited and anxious, 
long hoping that to-morrow or next week would clear my way, 
and long disappointed, I sadly missed the cheerful face and ready 
response of my friend. 

It was wretched weather; stormy and wet, stormy and wet; 
mud, mud, mud, deep in all the streets. Day after day, a vast 
heavy veil had been driving over London from the East, and it 
drove still, as if in the East there were an eternity of cloud and 
wind. So furious had been the gusts, that high buildings in town 
had had the lead stripped oft* their roofs ; and in the country, trees 
had been torn up, and sails of windmills carried away ; and gloomy 
accounts had come in from the coast, of shipwreck and death. 
Violent blasts of rain had accompanied these rages of wind, and 
the day just closed as I sat down to read had been the worst of all. 

Alterations have been made in that part of the Temple since 
that time, and it has not now so lonely a character as it had then, 
nor is it so exposed to the river. We lived at the top of the last 
house, and the wind rushing up the river shook the house that 
night, like discharges of cannon, or breakings of a sea. When the 
rain came with it and dashed against the windows, I thought, rais- 



270 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

ing my eyes to them as they rocked, that I might have fancied my- 
self in a storm-beaten light-house. Occasionally, the smoke came 
rolling down the chimney as though it could not bear to go out 
into such a night ; and when I set the doors open and looked down 
the staircase, the staircase lamps were blown out; and when I 
shaded my face with my hands and looked through the black 
windows (opening them ever so little, was out of the question in 
the teeth of such wind and rain) I saw that the lamps in the court 
were blown out, and that the lamps on the bridges and the shore 
were shuddering, and that the coal fires in barges on the river were 
being carried away before the wind like red-hot splashes in the 
rain. 

I read with my watch upon the table, purposing to close my 
book at eleven o'clock. As I shut it, Saint Paul's, and all the 
many church-clocks in the City — some leading, some accompany- 
ing, some following — struck that hour. The sound was curiously 
flawed by the wind ; and I was listening, and thinking how the 
wind assailed and tore it, when I heard a footstep on the stair. 

What nervous folly made me start, and awfully connect it with 
the footstep of my dead sister, matters not. It was past in a 
moment, and I listened again, and heard the footstep stumble in 
coming on. Remembering then, that the staircase-lights were 
blown out, I took up my reading-lamp and went out to the stair- 
head. Whoever was below had stopped on seeing my lamp, for all 
was quiet. 

" There is some one down there, is there not 1 " I called out, 
looking down. 

"Yes," said a voice from the darkness beneath. 

"What floor do you want?" 

" The top. Mr. Pip." 

" That is my name. — There is nothing the matter 1 " 

"Nothing the matter," returned the voice. And the man 
came on. 

I stood with my lamp held out over the stair-rail, and he came 
slowly within its light. It was a shaded lamp, to shine upon a 
book, and its circle of light was very contracted ; so that he was in 
it for a mere instant, and then out of it. In the instant I had 
seen a face that was strange to me, looking up with an incompre- 
hensible air of being touched and pleased by the sight of me. 

Moving the lamp as the man moved, I made out that he was 
substantially dressed, but roughly ; like a voyager by sea. That 
he had long iron-grey hair. That his age was about sixty. That 
he was a muscular man, strong on his legs, and that he was 
browned and hardened by exposure to weather. As be ascended 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 271 

the last stair or two, and the light of my lamp included us both, I 
saw, with a stupid kind of amazement, that he was holding out 
both his hands to me, 

" Pray what is your business ? " I asked him. 

"My business? "he repeated, pausing. "Ah! Yes. I will 
explain my business, by your leave." 

"Do you wish to come in?" 

"Yes," he replied; "I wish to come in. Master." 

I had asked him the question inhospitably enough, for I resented 
the sort of bright and gratified recognition that still shone in his 
face. I resented it, because it seemed to imply that he expected 
me to respond to it. But, I took him into the room I had just 
left, and, having set the lamp on the table, asked him as civilly as 
I could to explain himself 

He looked about him with the strangest air — an air of wonder- 
ing pleasure, as if he had some part in the things he admired — 
and he pulled oft' a rough outer coat, and his hat. Then, I saw 
that his head was furrowed and bald, and that the long iron-grey 
hair grew only on its sides. But, I saw nothing that in the least 
explained him. On the contrary, I saw him next moment, once 
more holding out both his hands to me. 

" What do you mean 1 " said I, half suspecting him to be mad. 

He stopped in his looking at me, and slowly rubbed his right 
hand over his head. "It's disappointing to a man," he said, in a 
coarse broken voice, "arter having looked for'ard so distant, and 
come so fur ; but you're not to blame for that — neither on us is 
to blame for that. I'll speak in half a minute. Give me half a 
minute, please." 

He sat down on a chair that stood before the fire, and covered 
his forehead with his large brown veinous hands. I looked at him 
attentively then, and recoiled a little from him; but I did not 
know him. 

"There's no one nigh," said he, looking over his shoulder; "is 
there?" 

"Why do you, a stranger coming into my rooms at this time of 
the night, ask that question ? " said I. 

"You're a game one," he returned, shaking his head at me with 
a deliberate affection, at once most unintelligible and most exasper- 
ating ; " I'm glad you've grow'd up, a game one ! But don't catch 
hold of me. You'd be sorry arterw^ards to have done it." 

I relinquished the intention he had detected, for I knew him ! 
Even yet I could not recall a single feature, but I knew him ! If 
the wind and the rain had driven away the intervening years, had 
scattered all the intervening objects, had swept us to the church- 



272 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

yard where we first stood face to face on such ditierent levels, I 
could not have known my convict more distinctly than I knew him 
now, as he sat in the chair before the fire. No need to take a file 
from his pocket and show it to me ; no need to take the handker- 
chief from his neck and twist it round his head ; no need to hug 
himself mth both his arms, and take a shivering turn across the 
room, looking back at me for recognition. I knew him before he 
gave me one of those aids, though, a moment before, I had not 
been conscious of remotely suspecting his identity. 

He came back to where I stood, and again held out both his 
hands. Not knowing what to do — for, in my astonishment I had 
lost my self-possession — I reluctantly gave him my hands. He 
grasped them heartily, raised them to his lips, kissed them, and 
still held them. 

"You acted nobly, my boy," said he. "Noble Pip I And I 
have never forgot it ! " 

At a change in his manner as if he were even going to embrace 
me, I laid a hand upon his breast and put him away. 

"Stay!" said I. "Keep off! If you are grateful to me for 
what I did when I Avas a little child, I hope you have shown your 
gratitude by mending your way of life. If you have come here to 
thank me, it was not necessary. Still, however, you have found 
me out, there must be something good in the feeling that has 
brought you here, and I will not repulse you ; but surely you must 
understand — I " 

My attention was so attracted by the singularity of his fixed 
look at me, that the words died away on my tongue. 

"You was a saying," he observed, when we had confronted one 
another in silence, "that surely I must understand. What, 
surely must I understand 1 " 

" That I cannot wish to renew that chance intercourse with you 
of long ago, under these different circumstances. I am glad to 
believe you have repented and recovered yourself. I am glad to 
tell you so. I am glad that, thinking I deserve to be thanked, 
you have come to thank me. But our ways are different ways, 
none the less. You are wet, and you look weary. Will you drink 
something before you go 1 ". 

He had replaced his neckerchief loosely, and had stood, keenly 
observant of me, biting a long end of it. "I think," he answered, 
still Avith the end at his mouth and still observant of me, "that I 
will drink (I thank you) afore I go." 

There was a tray ready on a side-table. I brought it to the 
table near the fire, and asked him what he would have? He 
touched one of the bottles without looking at it or speaking, and I 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 273 

made him some hot rum-and-water. I tried to keep my hand 
steady while I did so, but his look at me as he leaned back in his 
chair with the long draggled end of his neckerchief between his 
teeth — evidently forgotten — made my hand very difficult to mas- 
ter. When at last I put the glass to him, I saw with amazement 
that his eyes were full of tears. 

Up to this time I had remained standing, not to disguise that I 
wished him gone. But I was softened by the softened aspect of 
the man, and felt a touch of reproach. "I hope," said I, hurriedly 
putting something into a glass for myself, and drawing a chair 
to the table, "that you will not think I spoke harshly to you just 
now. I had no intention of doing it, and I am soriy for it if I 
did. I wish you well, and happy ! " 

As I put my glass to my lips, he glanced with surprise at the 
end of his neckerchief, dropping from his mouth when he opened 
it, and stretched out his hand. I gave him mine, and then he 
drank, and drew his sleeve across his eyes and forehead. 

" How are you living ? " I asked him. 

" I've been a sheep-farmer, stock-breeder, other trades besides, 
away in the new world," said he : " many a thousand mile of 
stormy water off from this." 

"I hope you have done well?" 

"I've done wonderfid w^eU. There's others went out alonger me 
as has done well too, but no man has done nigh as well as me. 
I'm famous for it." 

" I am glad to hear it." 

"I hope to hear you say so, my dear boy." 

Without stopping to try to understand those words or the tone 
in which they were spoken, I turned off to a point that had just 
come into my mind. 

"Have you ever seen a messenger you once sent to me," I 
inquired, "since heimdertook that trust?" 

"i^ever set eyes upon him. I warn't likely to it." 

" He came faithfully, and brought me the two one-pound notes. 
I was a poor boy then, as you know, and to a poor boy they were 
a Uttle fortune. But, like you, I have done well since, and you 
must let me pay them back. You can put them to some other 
poor boy's use." I took out my purse. 

He watched me as I laid my purse upon the table and opened 
it, and he watched me as I separated two one-pound notes from its 
contents. They were clean and new, and I spread them out and 
handed them over to him. Still watching me, he laid them one 
upon the other, folded them long-wise, gave them a twist, set fire 
to them at the lamp, and dropped the ashes into the tray. 



274 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

"May I make so bold," he said then, with a smile that was like 
a frown, and with a frown that was like a smile, "as ask you hoio 
you have done well, since you and me was out on them lone 
shivering marshes % " 

"How?" 

"Ah!" 

He emptied his glass, got up, and stood at the side of the fire, 
with his heavy brown hand on the mantel-shelf. He put a foot up 
to the bars, to dry and warm it, and the wet boot began to steam ; 
but, he neither looked at it, nor at the fii'e, but steadily looked at 
me. It was only now that I began to tremble. 

When my lips had parted, and had shaped some words that were 
without sound, I forced myself to tell him (though I could not do it 
distinctly), that I had been chosen to succeed to some property. 

"Might a mere warmint ask what property?" said he. 

I faltered, " I don't know." 

"Might a mere warmint ask whose property?" said'he. 

I faltered again, " I don't know." 

"Could I make a guess, I wonder," said the Convict, "at your 
income since you come of age ! As to the first figure, now. 
Five?" 

AVith my heart beating like a heavy hammer of disordered 
action, I rose out of my chair, and stood with my h.and upon the 
back of it, looking wildly at him. 

"Concerning a guardian," he went on. "There ought to have 
been some guardian or such-like, whiles you was a minor. Some 
lawyer, maybe. As to the first letter of that lawyer's name, now. 
Would it be J?" 

All the truth of my position came flashing on me ; and its dis- 
appointments, dangers, disgraces, consequences of all kinds, rushed 
in in such a multitude that I was borne do\\Ti by them and had to 
struggle for every breath I drew. " Put it," he resumed, " as the 
employer of that lawyer whose name begun with a J, and might 
be Jaggers — put it as he had come over sea to Portsmouth, and 
had landed there, and had wanted to come on to you. ' However, 
you have found me out,' you says just now. Well ! however did I 
find you out? Why, I wrote from Portsmouth to a person in 
London, for particulars of your address. That person's name? 
Why, Wemmick." 

I could not have spoken one word, though it had been to save 
my life. I stood, with a hand on the chair-back and a hand on 
my breast, where I seemed to be suffocating — I stood so, looking 
wildly at him, until I grasped at the chair, when the room began 
to surge and turn. He caught me, drew me to the sofa, put me 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 275 

up against the cushions, and bent on one knee before me : bringing 
the face that I now weU remembered, and that I shuddered at, very- 
near to mine. 

" Yes, Pip, dear boy, I've made a gentleman on you ! It's me 
wot has done it ! I swore that time, sure as ever I earned a guinea, 
that guinea should go to you. I swore arterwards, sure as ever I 
spec'lated and got rich, you should get rich. I lived rough, that 
you should live smooth ; I worked hard that you should be above 
work. What odds, dear boy ? Do I tell it fur you to feel a obli- 
gation? Not a bit. I tell it, fur you to know as that there 
hunted dunghill dog wot you kep life in, got his head so high that 
he could make a gentleman — and, Pip, you're him ! " 

The abhorrence in which I held the man, the dread I had of 
him, the repugnance with which I shrank from him, could not 
have been exceeded if he had been some terrible beast. 

" Look'ee here, Pip. I'm your second father. You're my son — 
more to me nor any son. I've put away money, only for you to 
spend. When I was a hired-out shepherd in a solitary hut, not 
seeing no faces but faces of sheep till I half forgot wot men's and 
women's faces wos like, I see youm. I drops my knife many a 
time in that hut when I was a eating my dinner or my supper, and 
I says, ' Here's the boy again, a looking at me whiles I eats and 
drinks ! ' I see you there a many times as plain as ever I see you 
on them misty marshes. ' Lord strike me dead ! ' I says each 
time — and I goes out in the open air to say it under the open 
heavens — ' but wot, if I gets liberty and money, I'll make that 
boy a gentleman ! ' And I done it. Why, look at you, dear boy ! 
Look at these here lodgings of yourn, fit for a lord ! A lord ? Ah ! 
You shall show money ^^dth lords for wagers, and beat 'em ! " 

In his heat and triumph, and in his knowledge that I had been 
nearly fainting, he did not remark on my reception of all this. It 
was the one grain of relief I had. 

" Look'ee here ! " he went on, taking my watch out of my pocket 
and turning towards him a ring on my finger, while I recoiled from 
his touch as if he had been a snake, " a gold 'un and a beauty : 
t}iat''s a gentleman's, I hope ! A diamond all set round with 
rubies ; that^s a gentleman's, I hope ! Look at your linen ; fine 
and beautiful ! Look at your clothes ; better ain't to be got ! 
And your books too," turning his eyes round the room, "mounting 
up, on their shelves, by hundreds ! And you read 'em ; don't you ? 
I see you'd been a reading of 'em when I come in. Ha, ha, ha ! 
You shall read 'em to me, dear boy ! And if they're in foreign 
languages wot I don't understand, I shall be just as proud as if 
I did." 



276 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

Again he took both my hands and put them to his lips, while 
my blood ran cold within me. 

"Don't you mind talking, Pip," said he, after again drawing his 
sleeve over his eyes and forehead, as the click came in his throat 
which I well remembered — and he was all the more horrible to me 
that he was so much in earnest; "you can't do better nor keep 
quiet, dear boy. You ain't looked slowly forward to this as I 
have; you wosn't prepared for this, as I wos. But didn't you 
never think it might be me ? " 

" no, no, no," I returned. " Never, never ! " 

" Well, you see it wos me, and single-handed. Never a soul in 
it but my own self and Mr. Jaggers." 

" Was there no one else ? " I asked. 

"No," said he, with a glance of surprise: "who else should 
there be? And, dear boy, how good-looking you have growed! 
There's bright eyes somewheres — eh? Isn't there bright eyes 
somewheres, wot you love the thoughts on ? " 

Estella, Estella! 

" They shall be yourn, dear boy, if money can buy 'em. Not 
that a gentleman like you, so well set up as you, can't win 'em off 
of his own game ; but money shall back you ! Let me finish wot I 
was a telling you, dear boy. From that there hut and that there 
hiring-out, I got money left me by my master (which died, and 
had been the same as me), and got my liberty and went for myself. 
In every single thing I went for, I went for you. ' Lord strike a 
blight upon it,' I says, wotever it was I went for, 'if it ain't for 
him ! ' It all prospered wonderful. As I give you to understand 
just now, I'm famous for it. It was the money left me, and the 
gains of the first few year, wot I sent home to Mr. Jaggers — 
all for you — when he first come arter you, agreeable to my 
letter." 

0, that he had never come ! That he had left me at the forge — 
far from contented, yet, by comparison, happy ! 

" And then, dear boy, it was a recompense to me, look'ee here, 
to know in secret that I was making a gentleman. The blood 
horses of them colonists might fling up the dust over me as I was 
walking ; what do I say ? I says to myself, ' I'm making a better 
gentleman nor ever you'll be ! ' When one of 'em says to another, 
'He was a convict, a few years ago, and is a ignorant common 
fellow now, for all he's lucky,' what do I say? I says to myself, 
'If I ain't a gentleman, nor yet ain't got no learning, I'm the 
owner of such. All on you owns stock and land ; which on you 
owns a brought-up London gentleman ? ' This way I kept myself 
a going. And this way I held steady afore my mind that I would 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 277 

for certain come one day and see my boy, and make myself known 
to bim, on his own ground." 

He laid his hand on my shoulder. I shuddered at the thought 
that for anything I knew, his hand might be stained Avith blood. 

"It wam't easy, Pip, for me to leave them parts, nor yet it 
warn't safe. But I held to it, and the harder it was, the stronger 
I held, for I was determined, and my mind firm made up. At last 
I done it. Dear boy, I done it ! " 

I tried to collect my thoughts, but I was stunned. Throughout, 
I had seemed to myself to attend more to the wind and the rain 
than to him ; even now, I could not separate liis voice from those 
voices, though those were loud and his was silent. 

" Where avlU you put me 1 " he asked, presently. " I must be put 
somewheres, dear boy." 

"To sleep?" said'l. 

"Yes. And to sleep long and sound," he answered: "for I've 
been sea-tossed and sea-washed, months and months." 

"My friend and companion," said I, rising from the sofa, "is 
absent ; you must have his room." 

" He won't come back to-moiTow ; wiU he ? " 

"Xo," said I, answering almost mechanically, in spite of my 
utmost efibrts; "not to-morrovN-.'' 

"Because, look'ee here, dear boy," he said, dropping his voice, 
and laying a long finger on my breast in an impressive manner, 
"caution is necessary." 

" How do vou mean ? Caution ? " 

''BvG— 'it's Death!" 

"What's death?" 

" I was sent for life. It's death to come back. There's been 
overmuch coming back of late years, and I should of a certainty be 
hanged if took." 

Xothing was needed but this : the T\Tetched man, after loading 
me with his wretched gold and silver chains for years, had risked 
his life to come to me, and I held it there in my keeping I If I had 
loved him instead of abhorring him ; if I had been attracted to 
him by the strongest admiration and affection, instead of shrinking 
from him with the strongest repugnance ; it could have been no 
worse. On the contrary, it would have been better, for his preser- 
vation would then have naturally and tenderly addressed my heart. 

My fii-st care was to close the shutters, so that no light might 
be seen from T\ithout. and then to close and make fast the doors. 
While I did so, he stood at the table drinking rum and eating 
biscuit : and when I saw him thus engaged, I saw my convict on 
the marshes at his meal again. It almost seemed to me as if he 
must stoop down presently, to file at his leg. 



278 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

When I had gone into Herbert's room, and had shut off any- 
other communication between it and the staircase than through the 
room in which our conversation had been held, I asked him if he 
would go to bed? He said yes, but asked me for some of my. 
" gentleman's linen " to put on in the morning. I brought it out, 
and laid it ready for him, and my blood again ran cold when he 
again took me by both hands to give me good night. 

I got away from liim, without knowing how I did it, and mended 
the fire in the room where we had been together, and sat down by 
it, afraid to go to bed. For an hour or more, I remained too 
stunned to think; and it was not until I began to think, that I 
began fully to know how wrecked I was, and how the ship in which 
I had sailed was gone to pieces. 

Miss Havisham's intentions towards me, all a mere dream; Estella 
not designed for me ; I only suffered in Satis House as a conven- 
ience, a sting for the greedy relations, a model with a mechanical 
heart to practise on when no other practice was at hand; those 
were the first smarts I had. But, sharpest and deepest pain of 
all — it was for the convict, guilty of I knew not what crimes, and 
liable to be taken out of those rooms where I sat thinking, and 
hanged at the Old Bailey door, that I had deserted Joe. 

I would not have gone back to Joe now, I would not have gone 
back to Biddy now, for any consideration : simply, I suppose, because 
my sense of my own worthless conduct to them was greater than 
every consideration. No wisdom on earth could have given me the 
comfort that I should have derived from their simplicity and fidelity; 
but I could never, never, never, undo what I had done. 

In every rage of wind and rush of rain, I heard pursuers. Twice, 
I could have sworn there was a knocking and whispering at the 
outer door. With these fears upon me, I began either to imagine 
or recall that I had had mysterious warnings of this man's approach. 
That, for weeks gone by, I had passed faces in the streets which I 
had thought like his. That, these likenesses had grown more 
numerous, as he, coming over the sea, had drawn nearer. That, 
his wicked spirit had somehow sent these messengers to mine, 
and that now on this stormy night he was as good as his word, 
and with me. 

Crowding up with these reflections came the reflection that I had 
seen him mth my childish eyes to be a desperately violent man; 
that I had heard that other convict reiterate that he had tried to 
murder him ; that I had seen him down in the ditch, tearing and 
fighting like a wild beast. Out of such remembrances I brought 
into the light of the fire, a half-formed terror that it might not be 
safe to be shut up there with him in the dead of the wild solitary 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 279 

night. This dilated until it filled the room, and impelled me to 
take a candle and go in and look at my dreadful burden. 

He had rolled a handkerchief round his head, and his face was 
set and lowering in his sleep. But he was asleep, and quietly too, 
though he had a pistol lying on the pillow. Assured of this, I 
softly removed the key to the outside of his door, and turned it on 
him before I again sat down by the fire. Gradually I slipped from 
the chair and lay on the floor. When I awoke without having 
parted in my sleep with the perception of my wretchedness, the 
clocks of the Eastward churches were striking five, the candles were 
wasted out, the fire was dead, and the wind and rain intensified the 
thick black darkness. 

THIS IS THE END OF THE SECOND STAGE OF PIP's EXPECTATIONS. 



CHAPTER XL. 

It was fortunate for me that I had to take precautions to ensure 
(so far as I could) the safety of my dreaded visitor ; for, this thought 
pressing on me when I awoke, held other thoughts in a confused 
concourse at a distance. 

The impossibility of keeping him concealed in the chambers was 
self-evident. It could not be done, and the attempt to do it would 
inevitably engender suspicion. True, I had no Avenger in my ser- 
vice now, but I was looked after by an inflammatory old female, 
assisted by an animated rag-bag whom she called her niece ; and 
to keep a room secret from them would be to invite curiosity and 
exaggeration. They both had weak eyes, which I had long attrib- 
uted to their chronically looking in at keyholes, and tHey were 
always at hand when not wanted, indeed that was their only reli- 
able quality besides larceny. Not to get up a mystery with these 
people, I resolved to announce in the morning that my uncle had 
unexpectedly come from the country. 

This course I decided on while I was yet groping about in the 
darkness for the means of getting a light. Not stumbling on the 
means after all, I was fain to go out to the adjacent Lodge and get 
the watchman there to come with his lantern. Now, in groping 
my way down the black staircase I fell over something, and that 
something was a man crouching in a corner. 

As the man made no answer when I asked him what he did 
there, but eluded my touch in silence, I ran to the Lodge and urged 
the watchman to come quickly : telling him of the incident on the 



280 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

way back. The wind being as fierce as ever, we did not care to 
endanger the liglit in the lantern by rekindling the extinguished 
lamps on the staircase, but we examined the staircase from the 
bottom to the top and found no one there. It then occurred to 
me as possible that the man might have slipped into my rooms ; 
so, lighting my candle at the watchman's, and leaving him standing 
at the door, I examined them carefully, including the room in 
which my dreaded guest lay asleep. All was quiet, and assuredly 
no other man was in those chambers. 

It troubled me that there should have been a lurker on the 
stairs, on that night of all nights in the year, and I asked the 
watchman, on the chance of eliciting some hopeful explanation as I 
handed him a dram at the door, whether he had admitted at his 
gate any gentleman who had perceptibly been dining out 1 Yes, he 
said; at different times of the night, three. One lived in Fountain 
Court, and the other two lived in the Lane, and he had seen them 
all go home. Again, the only other man who dwelt in the house 
of which my chambers formed a part, had been in the country for 
some weeks ; and he certainly had not returned in the night, be- 
cause we had seen his door with his seal on it as we came upstairs. 

" The night being so bad, sir," said the watchman, as he gave 
me back my glass, " uncommon few have come in at my gate. Be- 
sides them three gentlemen that I have named, I don't call to mind 
another since about eleven o'clock, when a stranger asked for you." 

" My uncle," I muttered. " Yes." 

" You saw him, sir ? " 

"Yes. Oh yes." 

" Likewise the person with him ? " 

" Person with him ? " I repeated. 

"I judged the person to be with him," returned the watchman. 
" The person stopped, when he stopped to make inquiry of me, and 
the person took this way when he took this way." 

" What sort of person ? " 

The watchman had not particularly noticed; he should say a 
working person ; to the best of his belief, he had a dust-coloured 
kind of clothes on, under a dark coat. The watchman made more 
light of the matter than I did, and naturally; not having my reason 
for attaching weight to it. 

When I had got rid of him, which I thought it well to do with- 
out prolonging explanations, my mind was much troubled by these 
two circumstances taken together. Whereas they were easy of in- 
nocent solution apart — as, for instance, some diner-out or diner-at- 
home, who had not gone near this watchman's gate, might have 
strayed to my staircase and dropped asleep there — and my name- 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 281 

less visitor might have brought some one with him to show him 
the way — still, joined, they had an ugly look to one as prone to 
distrust and fear as the changes of a few hours had made me. 

I lighted my fire, which burnt with a raw pale flare at that time 
of the morning, and fell into a doze before it. I seemed to have 
been dozing a whole night when the clock struck six. As there 
was full an hour and a half between me and daylight, I dozed 
again ; now, waking up uneasily, with prolix conversations about 
nothing, in my ears ; now, making thunder of the wind in the 
chimney ; at length, falling ofi" into a profound sleep from which 
the daylight woke me with a start. 

All this time I had never been able to consider my own situation, 
nor could I do so yet. I had not the power to attend to it. I 
was greatly dejected and distressed, but in an incoherent wholesale 
sort of way. As to forming any plan for the future, I could as 
soon have formed an elephant. When I opened the shutters and 
looked out at the wet wild morning, all of a leaden hue ; when I 
walked from room to room ; when I sat do"vvn again shivering, be- 
fore the fire, waiting for my laundress to appear ; I thought how 
miserable I was, but hardly knew why, or how long I had been so, 
or on what day of the week I made the reflection, or even who I 
was that made it. 

At last the old woman and the niece came in — the latter mth 
a head not easily distinguishable from her dusty broom — and tes- 
tified surprise at sight of me and the fire. To whom I imparted 
how my uncle had come in the night and was then asleep, and how 
tke breakfast preparations were to be modified accordingly. Then, 
I washed and dressed while they knocked the furniture about and 
made a dust ; and so, in a sort of dream or sleep- waking, I found 
myself sitting by the fire again, waiting for — Him — to come to 
breakfast. 

By-and-bye, his door opened and he came out. I could not bring 
myself to bear ti^ sight of him, and I thought he had a worse look 
by daylight. 

"I do not even know," said I, speaking low as he took his seat 
at the table, " by what name to call you. I have given out that 
you are my uncle." 

" That's it, dear boy ! Call me uncle." 

"You assumed some name, I suppose, on board ship?" 

"Yes, dear boy. I took the name of Provis." 

" Do you mean to keep that name 1 " 

"Why, yes, dear boy, it's as good as another — unless you'd 
like another." 

" What is your real name ? " I asked him in a whisper. 



282 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

" Magwitch," lie answered, in the same tone ; " chrisen'd Abel." 

" What were you brought up to be ? " 

"A warmint, dear boy." 

He answered quite seriously, and used the word as if it denoted 
some profession. 

" When you came into the Temple last night — " said I, pausing 
to wonder whether that could really have been last night, which 
seemed so long ago. 

"Yes, dear boy?" 

" When you came in at the gate and asked the watchman the 
way here, had you any one with you ? " 

" With me 1 No, dear boy." 

" But there was some one there ? " 

" I didn't take particular notice," he said, dubiously, "not know- 
ing the ways of the place. But I think there was a person, too, 
come in alonger me." 

"Are you known in London?" 

" I hope not ! " said he, giving his neck a jerk with his forefinger 
that made me turn hot and sick. 

" Were you known in London, once 1 " 

" Not over and above, dear boy. I was in the provinces mostly." 

" Were you — tried — in London ? " 

" Which time 1 " said he, with a sharp look. 

" The last time." 

He nodded. "First knowed Mr. Jaggers that way. Jaggers 
was for me." 

It was on my lips to ask him what he was tried for, but he to#k 
up a knife, gave it a flourish, and with the words, " And what I 
done is worked out and paid for ! " fell to at his breakfast. 

He ate in a ravenous way that was very disagreeable, and all his 
actions were uncouth, noisy, and greedy. Some of his teeth had 
failed him since I saw him eat on the marshes, and as he turned 
his food in his mouth, and turned his head side\^fays to bring his 
strongest fangs to bear upon it, he looked terribly like a hungry- 
old dog. 

If I had begun with any appetite, he would have taken it 
away, and I should have sat much as I did — repelled from him 
by an insurmountable aversion, and gloomily looking at the 
cloth. 

"I'm a heavy grubber, dear boy," he said, as a polite kind of 
apology when he had made an end of his meal, "but I always was. 
If it had been in my constitution to be a lighter grubber, I might 
ha' got into lighter trouble. Similarly, I must have my smoke. 
When I was first hired out as shepherd t'other side the world, it's 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 283 

my belief I should ha' turned into a molloncoUy-mad sheep myself, 
if I hadn't a had my smoke." 

As he said so he got up from table, and putting his hand into 
the breast of the pea-coat he wore, brought out a short black pipe, 
and a handful of loose tobacco of the kind that is called negro- 
head. Ha^dng filled his pipe, he put the surplus tobacco back 
again, as if his pocket were a drawer. Then, he took a live coal 
from the fire with the tongs, and lighted his pipe at it, and then 
turned round on the hearth-rug with his back to the fire, and went 
through his favourite action of holding out both his hands for mine. 

"And this," said he, dandling my hands up and down in his, as 
he puffed at his pipe; "and this is the gentleman what I made! 
The real genuine One ! It does me good fur to look at you, Pip. 
All I stip'late, is, to stand by and look at you, dear boy ! " 

I released my hands as soon as I could, and found that I was 
beginning slowly to settle down to the contemplation of my condi- 
tion. What I was chained to, and how heavily, became intelli- 
gible to me, as I heard his hoarse voice, and sat looking up at his 
furrowed bald head with its iron grey hair at the sides. 

" I mustn't see my gentleman a footing it in the mire of the 
streets ; there mustn't be no mud on his boots. My gentleman 
must have horses, Pip ! Horses to ride, and horses to drive, and 
horses for his servant to ride and drive as well. Shall colonists 
have their horses (and blood-'uns, if you please, good Lord !) and 
not my London gentleman 1 No, no. We'll show 'em another pair 
of shoes than that, Pip ; won't us ? " 

He took out of his pocket a great thick pocket-book, bursting 
with papers, and tossed it on the table. 

"There's something worth spending in that there book, dear 
boy. It's yourn. All I've got ain't mine ; it's yourn. Don't you 
be afeerd on it. There's more where that come from. I've come 
to the old country fur to see my gentleman spend his money like a 
gentleman. That'll be my pleasure. My pleasure 'ull be fur to 
see him do it. And blast you all ! " he wound up, looking round 
the room and snapping his fingers once with a loud snap, " blast 
you eveiy one, from the judge in his wig, to the colonist a stirring 
up the dust, I'll show a better gentleman than the whole kit on 
you put together ! " 

" Stop ! " said I, almost in a frenzy of fear and dislike, " I want 
to speak to you. I want to know what is to be done. I want to 
know how you are to be kept out of danger, how long you are 
going to stay, what projects you have." 

"Look'ee here, Pip," said he, laying his hand on my arm in a 
suddenly altered and subdued manner ; " first of all, look'ee here. 



284 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

I forgot myself half a minute ago. What I said was low ; that's 
what it was; low. Look'ee here, Pip. Look over it. I ain't a 
going to be low." 

"First," I resumed, half-groaning, "what precautions can be 
taken against your being recognised and seized ? " 

" No, dear boy," he said, in the same tone as before, " that don't 
go first. Lo^vness goes first. I ain't took so many year to make 
a gentleman, not without knowing what's due to him. Look'ee 
here, Pip. I was low ; that's what I was ; low. Look over it, 
dear boy." 

Some sense of the grimly-ludicrous moved me to a fretful laugh, 
as I replied, " I have looked over it. In Heaven's name, don't 
harp upon it ! " 

"Yes, but look'ee here," he persisted. "Dear boy, I ain't come, 
so fur, not fur to be low. Now, go on, dear boy. You was a 
saying " 

"How are you to be guarded from the danger you have 
incurred ? " 

"Well, dear boy, the danger ain't so great. Without I was 
informed agen, the danger ain't so much to signify. There's 
Jaggers, and there's Wemmick, and there's you. Who else is 
there to inform ? " 

"Is there no chance person who might identify you in the 
street 1 " said I. 

"Well," he returned, "there ain't many. Nor yet I don't in- 
tend to advertise myself in the newspapers by the name of A. M. 
come back from Botany Bay; and years have rolled away, and 
who's to gain by it ? Still, look'ee here, Pip. If the danger had 
been fifty times as great, I should ha' come to see you, mind you, 
just the same." 

" And how long do you remain ? " 

" How long ? " said he, taking his black pipe fi'om his mouth, 
and dropping his jaw as he stared at me. "I'm not a going- 
back. I've come for good." 

" Where are you to live ? " said I. " What is to be done with 
you ? Where will you be safe 1 " 

"Dear boy," he returned, "there's disguising wigs can be bought 
for money, and there's hair powder, and spectacles, and black 
clothes — shorts and what not. Others has done it safe afore, 
and what others has done afore, others can do agen. As to the 
where and how of living, dear boy, give tne your own opinions on it." 

"You take it smoothly now," said I, "but you were very serious 
last night, when you swore it was Death." 

" And so I swear it is Death," said he, putting his pipe back in 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 285 

his mouth, " and Death by the rope, in the open street not fur 
from this, and it's serious that you should fully understand it to 
be so. What then, when that's once done ? Here I am. To go 
back now, 'ud be as bad as to stand ground — worse. Besides, 
Pip, I'm here, because I've meant it by you, years and years. As 
to what I dare, I'm a old bird now, as has dared all manner of 
traps since first he was fledged, and I'm not afeerd to perch upon a 
scarecrow. If there's Death hid inside of it, there is, and let him 
come out, and I'll face him, and then I'll believe in him and not 
afore. And now let me have a look at my gentleman agen." 

Once more he took me by both hands and surveyed me with an 
air of admiring proprietorship, smoking with great complacency all 
the while. 

It appeared to me that I could do no better than secure him 
some quiet lodging hard by, of which he might take possession 
when Herbert returned : whom I expected in two or three days. 
That the secret must be confided to Herbert as a matter of un- 
avoidable necessity, even if I could have put the immense relief I 
should derive from sharing it with him out of the question, was 
plain to me. But it was by no means so plain to Mr. Pro vis (I 
resolved to call him by that name), who reserved his consent to 
Herbert's participation until he should have seen him and formed 
a favourable judgment of his physiognomy. ''And even then, 
dear boy," said he, pulling a greasy little clasped black Testament 
out of his pocket, " we'll have him on his oath." 

To state that my terrible patron carried this little black book 
about the world solely to swear people on in cases of emergency, 
would be to state what I never quite established — but this T can 
say, that I never knew him put it to any other use. The book itself 
had the appearance of having been stolen from some court of 
justice, and perhaps his knowledge of its antecedents, combined 
with his own experience in that wise, gave him a reliance on its 
powers as a sort of legal spell or charm. On this first occasion 
of his producing it, I recalled how he had made me swear fidelity 
in the churchyard long ago, and how he had described himself last 
night as always swearing to his resolutions in his solitude. 

As he was at present dressed in a seafaring slop suit, in which 
he looked as if he had some parrots and cigars to dispose of, I next 
discussed with him what dress he should wear. He cherished an 
extraordinary belief in the virtues of " shorts " as a disguise, and 
had in his own mind sketched a dress for himself that would have 
made him something between a dean and a dentist. It was with 
considerable difiiculty that I won him over to the assumption of a 
dress more like a prosperous farmer's ; and we arranged that he 



286 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

should cut his hair close, and wear a little powder. Lastly, as 
he had not yet been seen by the laundress or her niece, he was to 
keep himself out of their view imtil his change of dress was 
made. 

It would seem a simple matter to decide on these precautions ; 
but in my dazed, not to say distracted, state, it took so long, that 
I did not get out to further them until two or three in the after- 
noon. He was to remain shut up in the chambers while I was 
gone, and was on no account to open the door. 

There being to my knowledge a respectable lodging-house in 
Essex-street, the back of which looked into the Temple, and was 
almost within hail of my windows, I first of all repaired to that 
house, and was so fortunate as to secure the second floor for my 
uncle, Mr. Provis. I then went from shop to shop, making such 
purchases as were necessary to the change in his appearance. 
This business transacted, I turned my face, on my own account, 
to Little Britain. Mr. Jaggers was at his desk, but, seeing me 
enter, got up immediately and stood before his fire. 

"Now, Pip," said he, "be careful." 

" I will, sir," I returned. For, coming along I had thought well 
of what I was going to say. 

"Don't commit yourself," said Mr. Jaggers, "and don't commit 
anyone. You understand — anyone. Don't tell me anything : I 
don't want to know anything : I am not curious." 

Of course I saw that he knew the man was come. 

"I merely want, Mr. Jaggers," said I, "to assure myself what I 
have been told, is true. I have no hope of its being untrue, but at 
least I may verify it." 

Mr. Jaggers nodded. " But did you say ' told ' or ' informed ' ? " 
he asked me, with his head on one side, and not looking at me, but 
looking in a listening way at the floor. "Told would seem to im- 
ply verbal communication. You can't have verbal commimication 
with a man in New South Wales, you know." 

"I will say, informed, Mr. Jaggers." 

"Good." 

" I have been informed by a person named Abel Magwitch, that 
he is the benefactor so long unknown to me." 

" That is the man," said Mr. Jaggers, " — in New South Wales." 

" And only he ? " said I. 

"And only he," said Mr. Jaggers. 

" I am not so unreasonable, sir, as to think you at aU responsible 
for my mistakes and wrong conclusions ; but I always supposed it 
was Miss Havisham." 

"As you say, Pip," returned Mr. Jaggers, turning his eyes upon 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 287 

me coolly, and taking a bite at his forefinger, "I am not at all 
responsible for that." 

"And yet it looked so like it, sir," I pleaded ^\'ith a downcast 
heart. 

"Not a particle of evidence, Pip," said Mr. Jaggers, shaking his 
head and gathering up his skirts. "Take nothing on its looks; 
take everything on evidence. There's no better rule." 

"I have no more to say," said I, with a sigh, after standing 
silent for a little while. "I have verified my information, and 
there's an end." 

"And Magwitch — in New South Wales — having at last dis- 
closed himself," said Mr. Jaggers, "you will comprehend, Pip, how 
rigidly throughout my communication with you, I have always 
adhered to the strict line of fact. There has never been the least 
departure from the strict line of fact. You are quite aware of 
that ? " 

"Quite, sir." 

" I communicated to Magwitch — in New South Wales — when 
he first wrote to me — from New South AYales — the caution that 
he must not expect me ever to deviate from the strict line of fact. 
I also communicated to him another caution. He appeared to me 
to have obscurely hinted in his letter at some distant idea of seeing 
you in England here. I cautioned him that I must hear no more 
of that ; that he was not at all hkely to obtain a pardon ; that he 
was expatriated for the term of his natural life ; and that his pre- 
senting himself in this countiy would be an act of felony, rendering 
him liable to the extreme penalty of the law. I gave Magwitch 
that caution," said Mr. Jaggers, looking hard at me ; "I wrote it 
to New South Wales. He guided himself by it, no doubt." 

"No doubt," said I. 

"I have been informed by Wemmick," pursued Mr. Jaggers, still 
looking hard at me, "that he has received a letter, under date Ports- 
mouth, from a colonist of the name of Purvis, or " 

"Or Provis," I suggested. 

"Or Pro vis — thank you, Pip. Perhaps it zs Provis ? Perhaps 
you know it's Provis 1 " 

"Yes," said I. 

"You know it's Provis. A letter, under date Portsmouth, from 
a colonist of the name of Provis, asking for the particulars of your 
address, on behalf of Mag\Wtch. Wemmick sent him the partic- 
ulars, I understand, by return of post. Probably it is through 
Provis that you have received the explanation of Magwitch — in 
New South Wales ? " 

"It came through Provis," I replied. 



288 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

"Good day, Pip," said Mr. Jaggers, offering his hand; "glad to 
have seen you. In writing by post to Magwitch — in New South 
Wales — or in communicating with him through Provis, have the 
goodness to mention that the particulars and vouchers of our long 
account shall be sent to you, together with the balance ; for there 
is still a balance remaining. Good day, Pip ! " 

We shook hands, and he looked hard at me as long as he could 
see me. I turned at the door, and he was still looking hard at me, 
while the two vile casts on the shelf seemed to be trying to get their 
eyelids open, and to force out of their swollen throats, " 0, what a 
man he is ! " 

Wemmick was out, and though he had been at his desk he could 
have done nothing for me. I went straight back to the Temple, 
where I found the terrible Provis drinking rum-and-water, and 
smoking negro-head, in safety. 

Next day the clothes I had ordered all came home, and he put 
them on. Whatever he put on, became him less (it dismally seemed 
to me) than what he had worn before. To my thinking there was 
something in him that made it hopeless to attempt to disguise him. 
The more I dressed him, and the better I dressed him, the more he 
looked like the slouching fugitive on the marshes. This effect on 
my anxious fancy was partly referable, no doubt, to his old face and 
manner growing more familiar to me : but I believed too that he 
dragged one of his legs as if there were still a weight of iron on it, 
and that from head to foot there was Convict in the veiy grain of 
the man. 

The influences of his solitary hut-life were upon him besides, and 
gave him a savage air that no dress could tame; added to these 
were the influences of his subsequent branded life among men, and, 
crowding all, his consciousness that he was dodging and hiding now. 
In all his ways of sitting and standing, and eating and drinking — 
of brooding about, in a high-shouldered reluctant style — of taking 
out his great horn-handled jack-knife and wiping it on his legs and 
cutting his food — of lifting light glasses and cups to his lips, as if 
they were clumsy pannikins — of chopping a wedge off his bread, 
and soaking up with it the last fragments of gra\7- round and round 
his plate, as if to make the most of an allowance, and then drying 
his fingers on it, and then swallowing it — in these ways and a thou- 
sand other small nameless instances arising every minute in the day, 
there was Prisoner, Felon, Bondsman, plain as plain could be. 

It had been his own idea to wear that touch of powder, and I 
conceded the powder after overcoming the shorts. But I can com- 
pare the effect of it, when on, to nothing but the probable effect of 
rouge upon the dead ; so awful was the manner in which every- 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 289 

thing in him that it was most desirable to repress, started through 
that thii* layer of pretence, and seemed to come blazing out at the 
crown of his head. It was abandoned as soon as tried, and he 
wore his grizzled hair cut short. 

Words cannot tell what a sense I had, at the same time, of the 
dreadful mystery that he was to me. When he fell asleep of an 
evening, with his knotted hands clenching the sides of the easy- 
chair, and his bald head tattooed with deep wrinkles falling for- 
ward on his breast, I would sit and look at him, wondering what 
he had done, and loading him with all the crimes in the Calendar, 
until the impulse was powerful on me to start up and fly from him. 
Every hour so increased my abhorrence of him, that I even think 
I might have yielded to this impulse in the first agonies of being 
so haunted, notwithstanding all he had done for me and the risk he 
ran, but for the knowledge that Herbert must soon come back. 
Once, I actually did start out of bed in the night, and begin to 
dress myself in my worst clothes, hurriedly intending to leave him 
there with everything else I possessed, and enlist for India, as a 
private soldier. 

I doubt if a ghost could have been more terrible to me, up in 
those lonely rooms in the long evenings and long nights, with the 
wind and the rain always rushing by. A ghost could not have 
been taken and hanged on my account, and the consideration that 
he could be, and the dread that he would be, were no small addi- 
tion to my horrors. When he was not asleep, or playing a com- 
plicated kind of Patience with a ragged pack of cards of his own 

— a game that I never saw before or since, and in which he 
recorded his winnings by sticking his jack-knife into the table 

— when he was not engaged in either of these pursuits, he would 
ask me to read to him — "Foreign language, dear boy!" While 
I complied, he, not comprehending a single word, would stand 
before the fire surveying me with the air of an Exhibitor, and I 
would see him, between the fingers of the hand with which I 
shaded my face, appealing in dumb show to the furniture to take 
notice of my proficiency. The imaginary student pursued by the 
misshapen creature he had impiously made, was not more wretched 
than I, pursued by the creature who had made me, and recoiling 
from him with a stronger repulsion, the more he admired me and 
the fonder he was of me. 

This is written of, I am sensible, as if it had lasted a year. It 
lasted about five days. Expecting Herbert all the time, I dared 
not go out, except when I took Pro vis for an airing after dark. 
At length, one evening when dinner was over and I had dropped 
into a slumber quite worn out — for my nights had been agitated 



290 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

and my rest broken by fearful dreams — I was roused by the wel- 
come footstep on the staircase. Provis, who had been asleep too, 
staggered up at the noise I made, and in an instant I saw his jack- 
knife shining in his hand. 

" Quiet ! It's Herbert ! " I said ; and Herbert came bursting in, 
with the airy freshness of six hundred miles of France upon him, 

" Handel, my dear fellow, how are you, and again how are you, 
and again how are you? I seem to have been gone a twelve- 
month ! Why, so I must have been, for you have grown quite 
thin and pale ! Handel, my-^ Halloa ! I beg your pardon." 

He was stopped in his running on and in his shaking hands 
with me, by seeing Provis. Provis, regarding him with a fixed 
attention, was slowly putting up his jack-knife, and groping in 
another pocket for something else. 

"Herbert, my dear friend," said I, shutting the double doors, 
while Herbert stood staring and wondering, "something very 
strange has happened. This is — a visitor of mine." 

" It's all right, dear boy ! " said Provis, coming forward, with 
his little clasped black book, and then addressing himself to Her- 
bert. " Take it in your right hand. Lord strike you dead on the 
spot, if ever you split in any way sumever. Kiss it ! " 

"Do so, as he wishes it," I said to Herbert, So Herbert, look- 
ing at me with a friendly uneasiness and amazement, complied, 
and Provis immediately shaking hands with him, said, "Now, 
you're on your oath, you know. And never believe me on mine, if 
Pip shan't make a gentleman on you ! " 



CHAPTER XLI. 

In vain should I attempt to describe the astonishment and dis- 
quiet of Herbert, when he and I and Provis sat down before the 
fire, and I recounted the whole of the secret. Enough that I saw 
my own feelings reflected in Herbert's face, and, not least among 
them, my repugnance towards the man who had done so much 
for me. 

What would alone have set a division between that man and us, 
if there had been no other dividing circumstance, was his triumph 
in my story. Saving his troublesome sense of having been "low" 
on one occasion since his return — on which point he began to hold 
forth to Herbert, the moment my revelation was finished — he had 
no perception of the possibility of my finding any fault with my 
good fortune. His boast that he had made me a gentleman, and 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 291 

that he had come to see me support the character on his ample 
resources, was made for me quite as much as for himself. And 
that it was a highly agreeable boast to both of us, and that we 
must both be very proud of it, was a conclusion quite established 
in his own mind. 

" Though, look'ee here, Pip's comrade," he said to Herbert, after 
having discoursed for some time, " I know very well that once since 
I come back — for half a minute — I've been low. I said to Pip, 
I kuowed as I had been low. But don't you fret yourself on that 
score. I ain't made Pip a gentleman, and Pip ain't a going to 
make you a gentleman, not fur me not to know what's due to ye 
both. Dear boy, and Pip's comrade, you two may count upon me 
always having a genteel muzzle on. Muzzled I have been since 
that half a minute when I was betrayed into lowness, muzzled I 
am at the present time, muzzled I ever ^^dll be." 

Herbert said " Certainly," but looked as if there were no specific 
consolation in this, and remained perplexed and dismayed. We 
were anxious for the time when he would go to his lodging, and 
leave us together, but he was evidently jealous of leaving us together, 
and sat late. It was midnight before I took him round to Essex- 
street, and saw him safely in at his own dark door. When it 
closed upon him, I experienced the first moment of relief I had 
known since the night of his arrival. 

Never quite free from an uneasy remembrance of the man on the 
stairs, I had always looked about me in taking my guest out after 
dark, and in bringing him back; and I looked about me now. 
Difficult as it is in a large city to avoid the suspicion of being 
watched when the mind is conscious of danger in that regard, I 
could not persuade myself that any of the people within sight 
cared about my movements. The few who were passing, passed 
on their several ways, and the street was empty when I turned 
back into the Temple. Nobody had come out at the gate with us, 
nobody went in at the gate with me. As I crossed by the foun- 
tain, I saw his lighted back windows looking bright and quiet, and, 
when I stood for a few minutes in the doorway of the building 
where I lived, before going up the stairs. Garden-court was as still 
and lifeless as the staircase was when I ascended it. 

Herbert received me with open arms, and I had never felt before 
so blessedly, what it is to have a friend. When he had spoken 
some sound words of sympathy and encouragement, we sat down to 
consider the question, What was to be done 1 

The chair that Provis had occupied still remaining where it had 
stood — for he had a barrack way viith. him of hanging about one 
spot, in one unsettled manner, and going through one round of 



292 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

observances with his pipe and his negro-head and his jack-knife 
and his pack of cards, and what not, as if it were all put down for 
him on a slate — I say, his chair remaining where it had stood, 
Herbert unconsciously took it, but next moment started out of it, 
pushed it away, and took another. He had no occasion to say, 
after that, that he had conceived an aversion for my patron, neither 
had I occasion to confess my own. We interchanged that confi- 
dence without shaping a syllable. 

"What," said I to Herbert, when he was safe in another chair, 
"what is to be done ?" 

"My poor dear Handel," he replied, holding his head, "I am 
too stunned to think." 

" So was I, Herbert, when the blow first fell. Still, something 
must be done. He is intent upon various new expenses — horses, 
and carriages, and lavish appearances of all kinds. He must be 
stopped somehow." 

" You mean that you can't accept " 

" How can I ? " I interposed, as Herbert paused. " Think of 
him ! Look at him ! " 

An involuntary shudder passed over both of us. 

"Yet I am afraid the dreadful truth is, Herbert, that he is 
attached to me, strongly attached to me. Was there ever such a 
fate ! " 

"My poor dear Handel," Herbert repeated. 

"Then," said I, "after all, stopping short here, never taking 
another penny from him, think what I owe him already ! Then 
again : I am heavily in debt — very heavily for me, who have now 
no expectations — and I have been bred to no calling, and I am fit 
for nothing." 

" Well, well, well ! " Herbert remonstrated. "Don't say fit for 
nothing." 

" What am I fit for ? I know only one thing that I am fit for, 
and that is, to go for a soldier. And I might have gone, my dear 
Herbert, but for the prospect of taking counsel with your friend- 
ship and aff'ection." 

Of course I broke down there ; and of course Herbert, beyond 
seizing a warm grip of my hand, pretended not to know it. 

" Anyhow, my dear Handel," said he presently, " soldiering won't 
do. If you were to renounce this patronage and these favours, I 
suppose you would do so with some faint hope of one day repaying 
what you have already had. Not very strong, that hope, if you 
went soldiering. Besides, it's absurd. You would be infinitely 
better in Clarriker's house, small as it is. I am working up 
towards a partnership, you know." 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 293 

Poor fellow ! He little suspected with whose money. 

"But there is another question," said Herbert. "This is an 
ignorant determined man, who has long had one fixed idea. More 
than that, he seems to me (I may misjudge him) to be a man of a 
desperate and fierce character." 

"I know he is," I returned. "Let me tell you what evidence I 
have seen of it." And I told him what I had not mentioned in 
my narrative; of that encounter with the other convict. 

" See, then," said Herbert ; " think of this ! He comes here at 
the peril of his life, for the realisation of his fixed idea. In the 
moment of realisation, after all his toil and waiting, you cut the 
ground from under his feet, destroy his idea, and make his gains 
worthless to him. Do you see nothing that he might do under the 
disappointment?" 

" I have seen it, Herbert, and dreamed of it ever since the fatal 
night of his arrival. Nothing has been in my thoughts so distinctly 
as his putting himself in the way of being taken." 

" Then you may rely upon it," said Herbert, "that there would 
be great danger of his doing it. That is his power over you as 
long as he remains in England, and that would be his reckless 
course if you forsook him." 

I was so struck by the horror of this idea, which had weighed 
upon me from the first, and the working out of which would make 
me regard myself, in some sort, as his murderer, that I could not 
rest in my chair, but began pacing to and fro. I said to Herbert, 
meanwhile, that even if Provis were recognised and taken, in spite 
of himself, I should be wretched as the cause, however innocently. 
Yes ; even though I was so wretched in having him at large and 
near me, and even though I would far rather have worked at the 
forge all the days of my life than I would ever have come to this ! 

But there was no raving off the question, What was to be 
done 1 

" The first and the main thing to be done," said Herbert, " is to 
get him out of England. You will have to go with him, and then 
he maybe induced to go." 

"But get him where I will, could I prevent his coming back?" 

" My good Handel, is it not obvious that with Newgate in the 
next street, there must be far greater hazard in your breaking your 
mind to him and making him reckless, here, than elsewhere. If a 
pretext to get him away could be made out of that other convict, 
or out of anything else in his life, now." 

"There again!" said I, stopping before Herbert, with my open 
hands held out, as if they contained the desperation of the case. 
" I know nothing of his life. It has almost made me mad to sit 



294 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

here of a night and see him before me, so bound up with my fort- 
unes and misfortunes, and yet so unknown to me, except as' the 
miserable wretch who terrified me two days in my childhood ! " 

Herbert got up, and linked his arm in mine, and we slowly 
walked to and fro together, studying the carpet. 

" Handel," said Herbert, stopping, " you feel convinced that you 
can take no further benefits from him ; do you ? " 

" Fully. Surely you would, too, if you were in my place ? " 

"And you feel convinced that you must break with him?" 

" Herbert, can you ask me ? " 

" And you have, and are bound to have, that tenderness for the 
life he has risked on your account, that you must save him, if pos- 
sible, from throwing it away. Then you must get him out of Eng- 
land before you stir a finger to extricate yourself. That done, 
extricate yourself, in Heaven's name, and we'll see it out together, 
dear old boy." 

It was a comfort to shake hands upon it, and walk up and down 
again, with only that done. 

" Now, Herbert," said I, " with reference to gaining some knowl- 
edge of his history. There is but one way that I know of. I 
must ask him point-blank." 

" Yes. Ask him," said Herbert, " when we sit at breakfast in 
the morning." For, he had said, on taking leave of Herbert, that 
he would come to breakfast with us. 

With this project formed, we went to bed. I had the wildest 
dreams concerning him, and woke unrefreshed; I woke, too, to 
recover the fear which I had lost in the night, of his being found 
out as a returned transport. Waking, I never lost that fear. 

He came round at the appointed time, took out his jack-knife, 
and sat down to his meal. He was full of plans "for his gentle- 
man's coming out strong, and like a gentleman," and urged me to 
begin speedily upon the pocket-book, which he had left in my 
possession. He considered the chambers and his own lodging as 
temporary residences, and advised me to look out at once for a 
"fashionable crib" near Hyde Park, in which he could have "a 
shake-down." When he had made an end of his breakfast, and 
was wiping his knife on his leg, I said to him, without a word 
of preface : 

" After you were gone last night, I told my friend of the struggle 
that the soldiers found you engaged in on the marshes, when we 
came up. You remember ? " 

" Remember ! " ^aid he. " I think so ! " 

" We want to know something about that man — and about you. 
It is strange to know no more about either, and particularly you, 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 295 

than I was able to tell last night. Is not this as good a time as 
another for our knowing more ? " 

" Well ! " he said, after consideration. " You're on your oath, 
you know, Pip's comrade ? " 

" Assuredly," replied Herbert. 

"As to anything I say, you know," he insisted. "The oath 
applies to all." 

" I understand it to do so." 

" And look'ee here ! Wotever I done, is worked out and paid 
for," he insisted again. 

" So be it." 

He took out his black pipe and was going to fill it with negro- 
head, when, looking at the tangle of tobacco in his hand, he seemed 
to think it might perplex the thread of his narrative. He put 
it back again, stuck his pipe in a buttonhole of his coat, spread a 
hand on each knee, and, after turning an angry eye on the fire for 
a few silent moments, looked around at us and said what follows. 



CHAPTER XLII. 

" Dear boy and Pip's comrade. I am not a going fur to tell you 
my life, like a song or a stoiy-book. But to give it you short and 
handy, I'll put it at once into a mouthful of English. In jail and 
out of jail, in jail and out of jail, in jail and out of jail. There, 
you've got it. That's my life pretty much, down to such times as 
I got shipped off, arter Pip stood my friend. 

" I've been done everything to, pretty well — except hanged. I've 
been locked up, as much as a silver tea-kettle. I've been carted 
here and carted there, and put out of this town and put out of that 
town, and stuck in the stocks, and whipped and worried and drove. 
I've no more notion where I was born, than you have — if so 
much. I first became aware of myself, down in Essex, a thiev- 
ing turnips for my living. Summun had run away from me — a 
man — a tinker — and he'd took the fire with him, and left me wery 
cold. 

" I know'd my name to be Magwitch, chrisen'd Abel. How did 
I know it ? Much as I know'd the birds' names in the hedges to 
be chafiinch, sparrer, thrush. I might have thought it was all lies 
together, only as the birds' names come out true, I supposed mine 
did. 

"So fur as I could find, there warn't a soul that see young Abel 
Magwitch, with as little on him as in him, but wot caught fright 



296 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

at him, and either drove him off, or took him up. I was took up, 
took up, took up, to that extent that I reg'larly grow'd up took up. 

" This is the way it was, that when I was a ragged little creetur 
as much to be pitied as ever I see (not that I looked in the glass, 
for there warn't many insides of furnished houses known to me), I 
got the name of being hardened. ' This is a terrible hardened one,' 
they says to prison wisitors, picking out me. ' May be said to live 
in jails, this boy.' Then they looked at me, and I looked at them, 
and they measured my head, some on 'em — they had better a 
measured my stomach — and others on 'em giv me tracts what I 
couldn't read, and made me speeches what I couldn't unnerstand. 
They always went on agen me about the Devil. But what the 
devil was I to do ? I must put something into my stomach, mustn't 
I ? — Howsomever, I'm a getting low, and I know what's due. Dear 
boy and Pip's comrade, don't you be afeered of me being low. 

" Tramping, begging, thieving, working sometimes when I could 
— though that warn't as often as you may think, till you put the 
question whether you would ha' been over-ready to give me work 
yourselves — a bit of a poacher, a bit of a labourer, a bit of a wag- 
goner, a bit of a haymaker, a bit of a hawker, a bit of most things 
that don't pay and lead to trouble, I got to be a man. A desert- 
ing soldier in a Traveller's Rest, what lay hid up to the chin under 
a lot of taturs, learnt me to read ; and a travelling Giant what 
signed his name at a penny a time learnt me to write. I warn't 
locked up as often now as formerly, but I wore out my good share 
of key-metal still. 

"At Epsom races, a matter of over twenty year ago, I got 
acquainted wi' a man whose skull I'd crack wi' this poker, like the 
claw of a lobster, if I'd got it on this hob. His right name was 
Compeyson; and that's the man, dear boy, what you see me a 
pounding in the ditch, according to what you truly told your com- 
rade arter I was gone last night. 

" He set up fur a gentleman, this Compeyson, and he'd been to 
a public boarding-school and had learning. He was a smooth one 
to talk, and was a dab at the ways of gentlefolks. He was good- 
looking too. It was the night afore the great race, when I found 
him on the heath, in a booth that I know'd on. Him and some 
more was a sitting among the tables when I went in, and the land- 
lord (which had a knowledge of me, and was a sporting one) called 
him out, and said, ' I think this is a man that might suit you ' — 
meaning I was. 

" Compeyson, he looks at me very noticing, and I look at him. 
He has a watch and a chain and a ring and a breast-pin and a 
handsome suit of clothes. 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 297 

" ' To judge from api^earances, you're out of luck,' says Compey- 
son to me. 

"'Yes, master, and I've never been in it much.' (I had come out 
of Kingston Jail last on a vagrancy committal. Not but what it 
might have been for something else ; but it warn't.) 

" 'Luck changes,' says Compeyson; 'perhaps yours is going to 
change.' 

" I says, ' I hope it may be so. There's room.' 

" ' What can you do ? ' says Compeyson. 

" ' Eat and drink,' I says ; ' if you'll find the materials.' 

"Compeyson laughed, looked at me again very noticing, giv 
me five shillings, and appointed me for next night. Same 
place. 

" I went to Compeyson next night, same place, and Compeyson 
took me on to be his man and pardner. And what was Compey- 
son's business in which we was to go pardners? Compeyson's 
business was the swindling, handwriting forging, stolen bank-note 
passing, and such-like. All sorts of traps as Compeyson could set 
with his head, and keep his own legs out of and get the profits 
from and let another man in for, was Compeyson's business. He'd 
no more heart than a iron file, he was as cold as death, and he 
had the head of the Devil afore mentioned. 

" There was another in with Compeyson, as was called Arthur 
— not as being so chrisen'd, but as a surname. He was in a 
Decline, and was a shadow to look at. Him and Compeyson had 
been in a bad thing with a rich lady some years afore, and they'd 
made a pot of money by it ; but Compeyson betted and gamed, 
and he'd have run through the king's taxes. So, Arthur was a 
dying and a dying poor and with the horrors on him, and Compey- 
son's wife (which Compeyson kicked mostly) was a having pity on 
him when she could, and Compeyson was a having pity on nothing 
and nobody. 

"I might a took warning by Arthur, but I didn't; and I 
won't pretend I was partick'ler — for where 'ud be the good on it, 
dear boy and comrade 1 So I begun wi' Compeyson, and a poor 
tool I was in his hands. Arthur lived at the top of Compeyson's 
house (over nigh Brentford it was), and Compeyson kept a careful 
account agen him for board and lodging, in case he should ever get 
better to work it out. But Arthur soon settled the account. The 
second or third time as ever I see him, he come a tearing down 
into Compeyson's parlour late at night, in only a flannel gown, 
with his hair all in a sweat, and he says to Compeyson's wife, 
' Sally, she really is upstairs alonger me, now, and I can't get rid 
of her. She's all in white,' he says, ' wi' white flowers in her hair, 



298 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

and she's awful mad, aud she's got a shroud hanging over her arm, 
and she says she'll put it on me at five in the morning.' 

" Says Compeyson : ' Why, you fool, don't you know she's got a 
living body? And how should she be up there, without coming 
through the door, or in at the window, and up the stairs 1 ' 

" 'I don't know how she's there,' says Arthur, shivering dreadful 
with the horrors, ' but she's standing in the corner at the foot of the 
bed, awful mad. And over where her heart's broke — t/ou broke 
it ! — there's drops of blood.' 

" Compeyson spoke hardy, but he was always a coward. * Go 
up alonger this drivelling sick man,' he says to his wife, 'and, 
Magwitch, lend her a hand, will you ? ' But he never come nigh 
himself. 

" Compeyson's wife and me took him up to bed agen, and he 
raved most dreadful. ' Why look at her ! ' he cries out. ' She's a 
shaking the shroud at me ! Don't you see her ? Look at her 
eyes ! Ain't it awful to see her so mad? ' Next, he cries, ' She'll 
put it on me, and then I'm done for! Take it away from her, 
take it away ! ' And then he catched hold of us, and kep on a 
talking to her, and answering of her, till I half-beheved I see her 
myself. 

" Compeyson's wife, being used to him, give him some liquor to 
get the horrors off, and by-and-bye he quieted. ' Oh, she's gone ! 
Has her keeper been for her?' he says. 'Yes,' says Compeyson's 
wife. ' Did you tell him to lock and bar her in?' 'Yes.' 'And 
to take that ugly thing away from her?' 'Yes, yes, all right.' 
'You're a good creetur,' he says, 'don't leave me, whatever you do, 
and thank you ! ' 

" He rested pretty quiet till it might want a few minutes of five, 
and then he starts up with a scream, and screams out, ' Here she 
is ! She's got the shroud again. She's unfolding it. She's com- 
ing out of the corner. She's coming to the bed. Hold me, both 
on you — one of each side — don't let her touch me with it. Hah ! 
She missed me that time. Don't let her throw it over my shoul- 
ders. Don't let her Hft me up to get it round me. She's hfting 
me up. Keep me down ! ' Then he lifted himself up hard, and 
was dead. 

" Compeyson took it easy as a good riddance for both sides. 
Him and me was soon busy, and first he swore me (being ever 
artful) on my own book — this here little black book, dear boy, 
what I swore your comrade on. 

"Not to go into the things that Compeyson planned, and I 
done — which 'ud take a week — I'll simply say to you, dear boy, 
and Pip's comrade, that that man got me into such nets as made 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 299 

me his black slave. I was always in debt to him, always under 
his thumb, always a working, always a getting into danger. He 
was younger than me, but he'd got craft, and he'd got learning, and 
he overmatched me five hundred times told and no mercy. My 

Missis as I had the hard time wi' Stop though! I ain't 

brought her in " 

He looked about him in a confused way, as if he had lost his 
place in the book of his remembrance ; and he turned his face to 
the fire, and spread his hands broader on his knees, and lifted 
them off' and put them on again. 

" There ain't no need to go into it," he said, looking round 
once more. " The time wi' Compeyson was a'most as hard a time 
as ever I had ; that said, all's said. Did I tell you as I was tried, 
alone, for misdemeanour, while with Compeyson 1 " 

I answered, Ko. 

" Well ! " he said, " I ivas, and got convicted. As to took up on 
suspicion, that was twice or three times in the four or five year that 
it lasted ; but evidence was wanting. At last, me and Compeyson 
was both committed for felony — on a charge of putting stolen notes 
in circulation — and there was other charges behind. Compeyson 
says to me, 'Separate defences, no communication,' and that was 
all. And I was so miserable poor, that I sold all the clothes I had, 
except what hung on my back, afore I could get Jaggers. 

" When we was put in the dock, I noticed first of all what 
a gentleman Compeyson looked, wi' his curly hair and his black 
clothes and his white pocket-handkercher, and what a common 
sort of a wretch I looked. When the prosecution opened and the 
evidence was put short, aforehand, I noticed how heavy it all bore 
on me, and how light on him. When the evidence was giv in the 
box, I noticed how it was always me that had come for'ard, and 
could be swore to, how it was always me that the money had been 
paid to, how it was always me that had seemed to work the thing 
and get the profit. But, when the defence come on, then I see the 
plan plainer ; for, says the counsellor for Compeyson, ' My lord and 
gentlemen, here you has afore you, side by side, two persons as 
your eyes can separate wide ; one, the younger, well brought up, 
who will be spoke to as such; one, the elder, ill brought up, who 
will be spoke to as such ; one, the younger, seldom if ever seen in 
these here transactions, and only suspected; t'other, the elder, 
always seen in 'em and always wi' his guilt brought home. Can 
you doubt, if there is but one in it, which is the one, and if there 
is two in it, which is much the worst one ? ' And such-like. And 
when it come to character, warn't it Compeyson as had been to 
school, and warn't it his schoolfellows as was in this position and in 



300 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

that, and warii't it him as had been know'd by witnesses in such 
clubs and societies, and nowt to his disadvantage 1 And warn't it 
me as had been tried afore, and as had been know'd up hill and down 
dale in Bridewells and Lock-Ups 1 And when it comes to speech- 
making, warn't it Compeyson as could speak to 'em wi' his face 
dropping eveiy now and then into his white pocket-handkercher — 
ah ! and wi' verses in his speech, too — and warn't it me as could 
only say, ' Gentlemen, this man at my side is a most precious rascal ' ? 
And when the verdict come, warn't it Compeyson as was recom- 
mended to mercy on account of good character and bad company, 
and giving up all the information he could agen me, and warn't 
it me as got never a word but Guilty? And when I says to 
Compeyson, ' Once out of this court, I'll smash that face of yourn ! ' 
ain't it Compeyson as prays the Judge to be protected, and gets 
two turnkeys stood betwixt us 1 And when we're sentenced, ain't 
it him as gets seven year, and me fourteen, and ain't it him as the 
Judge is sorry for, because he might a done so well, and ain't it me 
as the Judge perceives to be a old offender of wiolent passion, likely 
to come to worse ? " 

He had worked himself into a state of great excitement, but he 
checked it, took two or three short breaths, swallowed as often, and 
stretching out his hand towards me, said, in a reassuring manner, 
" I ain't a going to be low, dear boy ! " 

He had so heated himself that he took out his handkerchief and 
wiped his face and head and neck and hands, before he could go on. 

" I had said to Compeyson that I'd smash that face of his, and I 
swore Lord smash mine ! to do it. We was in the same prison- 
ship, but I couldn't get at him for long, though I tried. At last I 
come behind him and hit him on the cheek to turn him round and 
get a smashing one at him, when I was seen and seized. The 
black-hole of that ship warn't a strong one, to a judge of black- 
holes that could swim and dive. I escaped to the shore, and I was 
a hiding among the graves there, envying them as was in 'em and 
all over, when I first see my boy ! " 

He regarded me with a look of affection that made him almost 
abhorrent to me again, though I had felt great pity for him. 

" By my boy, I was giv to understand as Compeyson was out on 
them marshes too. Upon my soul, I half believe he escaped in his 
terror, to get quit of me, not knowing it was me as had got ashore. 
I hunted him down. I smashed his face. 'And now,' says I, 'as 
the worse thing I can do, caring nothing for myself, I'll drag you 
back.' And I'd have swum off, towing him by the hair, if it had 
come to that, and I'd a got him aboard without the soldiers. 

"Of course he'd much the best of it to the last — his character 



302 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

was so good. He had escaped when he was made half-wild by me 
and my murderous intentions; and his punishment was light. 
I was put in irons, brought to trial again, and sent for life. I 
didn't stop for life, dear boy and Pip's comrade, being here." 

He wiped himself again, as he had done before, and then slowly 
took his tangle of tobacco from his pocket, and plucked his pipe 
from his buttonhole, and slowly filled it, and began to smoke. 

"Is he dead?" I asked after a silence. 

" Is who dead, dear boy ? " 

" Compeyson." 

"He hopes /am, if he's alive, you may be sure," with a fierce 
look. "I never heard no more of him." 

Herbert had been writing with his pencil in the cover of a book. 
He softly pushed the book over to me, as Provis stood smoking 
with his eyes on the fire, and I read in it : 

" Young Havisham's name was Arthur. Compeyson is the man 
who professed to be Miss Havisham's lover." 

I shut the book and nodded slightly to Herbert, and jDut the book 
by ; but we neither of us said anything, and both looked at Provis 
as he stood smoking by the fire. 



CHAPTER XLIII. 

Why should I pause to ask how much of my shrinking from 
Provis might be traced to Estella? Why should I loiter on my 
road, to compare the state of mind in which I had tried to rid 
myself of the stain of the prison before meeting her at the coach- 
office, with the state of mind in which I now reflected on the abyss 
between Estella in her pride and beauty, and the returned transport 
whom I harboured 1 The road would be none the smoother for it, 
the end would be none the better for it ; he would not be helped, 
nor I extenuated. 

A new fear had been engendered in my mind by his narrative ; 
or rather, his narrative had given form and purpose to the fear that 
was already there. If Compeyson were alive and should discover 
his return, I could hardly doubt the consequence. That Compeyson 
stood in mortal fear of him, neither of the two could know much 
better than I; and that any such man as that man had been de- 
scribed to be, would hesitate to release himself for good from a 
dreaded enemy by the safe means of becoming an informer, was 
scarcely to be imagined. 

Never had I breathed, and never would I breathe — or so I 
resolved — a word of Estella to Provis. But, I said to Herbert 



GREAT EXrECTATlONS. 303 

that before I could go abroad, I must see both Estella and Miss 
Havisham. This \Yas when we were left alone on the night of the 
day when Provis told us his story. I resolved to go out to Rich- 
mond next day, and I went. 

On my presenting myself at ]\Irs. Brandley's, Estella's maid was 
called to tell me that Estella had gone into the country. Where ? 
To Satis House, as usual. Not as usual, I said, for she had never 
yet gone there without me ; when was she coming back ? There 
was an air of reservation in the answer which increased my per- 
plexity, and the answer was that her maid believed she was only 
coming back at all for a little while. I could make nothing of this, 
except that it was meant that I should make nothing of it, and I 
went home again in complete discomfiture. 

Another night-consultation with Herbert after Provis was gone 
home (I always took him home, and always looked well about me), 
led us to the conclusion that nothing should be said about going 
abroad until I came back from Miss Havisham's. In the mean- 
time Herbert and I were to consider separately what it would be 
best to say ; whether we should devise any pretence of being afraid 
that he was under suspicious observation; or whether I, who had 
never yet been abroad, should propose an expedition. We both 
knew that I had but to propose anything, and he would consent. 
We agreed that his remaining many days in his present hazard was 
not to be thought of. 

Next day, I had the meanness to feign that I was under a binding 
promise to go down to Joe ; but I was capable of almost any mean- 
ness towards Joe or his name. Provis was to be strictly careful 
while I was gone, and Herbert was to take the charge of him that 
I had taken. I was to be absent only one night, and, on my return, 
the gratification of his impatience for my starting as a gentleman on 
a greater scale, was to be begun. It occurred to me then, and as 
I afterwards found to Herbert also, that he might be best got away 
across the water, on that pretence — as, to make purchases, or the 
like. 

Having thus cleared the way for my expedition to Miss Hav- 
isham's, I set off by the early morning coach before it was yet 
light, and was out in the open country-road when the day came 
creeping on, halting and whimpering and shivering, and wrapped in 
patches of cloud and rags of mist, like a beggar. AVhen we drove 
up to the Blue Boar after a drizzly ride, whom should I see come 
out under the gateway, toothpick in hand, to look at the coach, but 
Bentley Drummle ! 

As he pretended not to see me, I pretended not to see him. It 
was a very lame pretence on both sides ; the lamer, because we both 



304 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

went into the coffee-room, where he had just finished his breakfast, 
and where I had ordered mine. It was poisonous to me to see him 
in the town, for I very well knew why he had come there. 

Pretending to read a smeary newspaper long out of date, which 
had nothing half so legible in its local news, as the foreign matter 
of coffee, pickles, fish-sauces, gravy, melted butter, and wine, with 
which it was sprinkled all over, as if it had taken the measles in a 
highly irregular form, I sat at my table while he stood before the 
fire. By degrees it became an enormous injury to me that he stood 
before the fire. And I got up, determined to have my share of it. 
I had to put my hands behind his legs for the poker when I went 
to the fireplace to stir the fire, but still pretended not to know him. 

" Is this a cut ? " said Mr. Drummle. 

" Oh ? " said I, poker in hand ; " it's you, is it 1 How do you 
do ? I was wondering who it was, who kept the fire off." 

With that I poked tremendously, and having done so, planted 
myself side by side with Mr. Drummle, my shoulders squared, and 
my back to the fire. 

"You have just come down?" said Mr. Drummle, edging me a 
little away with his shoulder. 

"Yes," said I, edging him a little away with m^ shoulder. 

"Beastly place," said Drummle — "Your part of the country, 
I think?" 

"Yes," I assented. "I am told it's very like your Shropshire." 

" Not in the least like it," said Drummle. 

Here Mr. Drummle looked at his boots and I looked at mine, 
and then Mr. Drummle looked at my boots and I looked at his. 

"Have you been here long?" I asked, determined not to yield 
an inch of the fire. 

"Long enough to be tired of it," returned Drummle, pretending 
to yawn, but equally determined. 

" Do you stay here long ? " 

" Can't say," answered Mr. Drummle. " Do you ? " 

" Can't say," said I. 

I felt here, through a tingling in my blood, that if Mr. Dnimmle's 
shoulder had claimed another hair's breadth of room, I should have 
jerked him into the window; equally, that if my shoulder had 
urged a similar claim, Mr. Drummle would have jerked me into the 
nearest box. He whistled a little. So did I. 

" Large tract of marshes about here, I believe ? " said Drummle. 

"Yes. What of that? "said L 

Mr. Drummle looked at me, and then at my boots, and then said, 
" Oh ! " and laughed. 

" Are you amused, Mr. Drummle ? " 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 305 

"No," said he, "not particularly. I am going out for a ride in 
the saddle. I mean to explore those marshes for amusement. Out- 
of-the-way villages there, they tell me. Curious little public- 
houses — and smithies — and that. Waiter ! " 

"Yes, sir." 

" Is that horse of mine ready ? " 

"Brought round to the door, sir." 

" I say. Look here, you sir. The lady won't ride to-day; the 
weather won't do. " 

" Very good, sir." 

" And I don't dine, because I am going to dine at the lady's." 

"Very good, sir." 

Then, Drummle glanced at me, with an insolent triumph on his 
great-jowled face that cut me to the heart, dull as he was, and so 
exasperated me, that I felt inclined to take him in my arms (as 
the robber in the story-book is said to have taken the old lady) 
and seat him on the fire. 

One thing was manifest to both of us, and that was, that until 
relief came, neither of us could relinquish the fire. There we stood, 
well squared up before it, shoulder to shoulder and foot to foot, with 
our hands behind us, not budging an inch. The horse was visible 
outside in the drizzle at the door, my breakfast was put on table, 
Drummle's was cleared away, the waiter invited me to begin, I 
nodded, we both stood our ground. 

" Have you been to the Grove since 1 " said Drummle. 

" No," said I, " I had quite enough of the Finches the last time 
I was there." 

"Was that when we had the diff'erence of opinion?" 

" Yes," I replied, very shortly. 

" Come, come ! they let you off" easily enough," sneered Drummle. 
" You shouldn't have lost your temper." 

"Mr. Drummle," said I, "you are not competent to give advice 
on that subject. When I lose my temper (not that I admit having 
done so on that occasion), I don't throw glasses." 

" I do," said Drummle. 

After glancing at him once or twice, in an increased state of 
smouldering ferocity, I said : 

"Mr. Drummle, I did not seek this conversation, and I don't think 
it's an agreeable one." 

" I am sure it's not," said he, superciliously over his shoulder, " I 
don't think anything about it." 

"And therefore," I went on, "with your leave, I will suggest 
that we hold no kind of communication in future." 

"Quite my opinion," said Drummle, "and what I should have 



306 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

suggested myself, or done — more likely — without suggesting. 
But don't lose your temper. Haven't you lost enough without 
that?" 

" What do you mean, sir ? " 

"Waiter," said Drummle, by way of answering me. 

The waiter reappeared. 

" Look here, you sir. You quite understand that the young lady 
don't ride to-day, and that I dine at the young lady's 1 " 

" Quite so, sir ! " 

When the waiter had felt my fast cooling tea-pot with the palm 
of his hand, and looked imploringly at me, and had gone out, 
Drummle, careful not to move the shoulder next me, took a cigar 
from his pocket and bit the end off, but showed no sign of stirring. 
Choking and boiling as I was, I felt that we could not go a word 
further, without introducing Estella's name, which I could not 
endure to hear him utter ; and therefore I looked stonily at the 
opposite wall, as if there were no one present, and forced myself to 
silence. How long we might have remained in this ridiculous 
position it is impossible to say, but for the incursion of three thriv- 
ing farmers — laid on by the waiter, I think — who came into the 
coifee-room unbuttoning their great-coats and rubbing their hands, 
and before whom, as they charged at the fire, we were obliged to 
give way. 

I saw him through the window, seizing his horse's mane, and 
mounting in his blundering brutal manner, and sidling and backing 
away. I thought he was gone, when he came back, calling for a 
light for the cigar in his mouth, which he had forgotten. A man 
in a dust-coloured dress appeared with what was wanted — I could 
not have said from where : whether from the inn yard, or the street, 
or where not — and as Drummle leaned down from his saddle and 
lighted bis cigar and laughed, with a jerk of his head towards the 
coffee-room windows, the slouching shoulders, and ragged hair, 
of this man, whose back was towards me, reminded me of 
Orlick. 

Too heavily out of sorts to care much at the time whether it 
were he or no, or after all to touch the breakfast, I washed the 
weather and the journey from my face and hands, and went out 
to the memorable old house that it would have been so much the 
better for me never to have entered, never to have seen. 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 307 



CHAPTER XLIV. 



In the room where the dressing-table stood, and where the wax 
candles burnt on the wall, I found Miss Havisham and Estella; 
Miss Havisham seated on a settee near the fire, and Estella on a 
cushion at her feet. Estella was knitting, and Miss Havisham was 
looking on. They both raised their eyes as I went in, and both 
saw an alteration in me. I derived that from the look they inter- 
changed. 

" And what wind," said Miss Ha\dsham, " blows you here, Pip? " 

Though she looked steadily at me, I saw that she was rather 
confused. Estella, pausing a moment in her knitting with her eyes 
upon me, and then going on, I fancied that I read in the action of 
her fingers, as plainly as if she had told me in the dumb alphabet, 
that she perceived I had discovered my real benefactor. 

" Miss Havisham," said I, " I went to Richmond yesterday, to 
speak to Estella ; and finding that some wind had blown her here, 
I followed." 

Miss Havisham motioning to me for the third or fourth time to 
sit down, I took the chair by the dressing-table, which I had often 
seen her occupy. With all that ruin at my feet and about me, it 
seemed a natural place for me, that day. 

" What I had to say to Estella, Miss Ha^^sham, I will say before 
you, presently — in a few moments. It will not surprise you, it will 
not displease you. I am as unhappy as you can ever have meant me 
to be." 

Miss Havisham continued to look steadily at me. I could see in 
the action of Estella's fingers as they worked, that she attended to 
what I said : but she did not look up. 

"I have found out who my patron is. It is not a fortunate dis- 
covery, and is not likely ever to enrich me in reputation, station, 
fortune, anything. There are reasons why I must say no more of 
that. It is not my secret, but another's." 

As I was silent for a while, looking at Estella and considering 
how to go on. Miss Havisham repeated, "It is not your secret, 
but another's. Well ? " 

" When you first caused me to be brought here, Miss Havisham ; 
when I belonged to the village over yonder, that I wish I had never 
left ; I suppose I did really come here, as any other chance boy 
might have come — as a kind of servant, to gratify a want or a 
whim, and to be paid for it % " 

"Ay, Pip," replied Miss Havisham, steadily nodding her head; 
"you did." 



308 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

" And that Mr. Jaggers " 

" Mr. Jaggers," said Miss Havisham, taking me up in a firm tone, 
*' had nothing to do with it, and knew nothing of it. His being my 
lawyer, and his being the lawyer of your patron, is a coincidence. 
He holds the same relation towards numbers of people, and it might 
easily arise. Be that as it may, it did arise, and was not brought 
about by any one." 

Any one might have seen in her haggard face that there was no 
suppression or evasion so far. 

" But when I fell into the mistake I have so long remained in, 
at least you led me on ? " said I. 

"Yes," she returned, again nodding steadily, "I let you go 
on." 

"Was that kind?" 

"Who am I," cried Miss Havisham, striking her stick upon the 
floor and flashing into wrath so suddenly that Estella glanced up at 
her in surprise, " who am I, for God's sake, that I should be kind ? " 

It was a weak complaint to have made, and I had not meant to 
make it. I told her so, as she sat brooding over this outburst. 

" Well, well, well ! " she said. " What else ? " 

" I was liberally paid for my old attendance here," I said, to soothe 
her, "in being apprenticed, and I have asked these questions only 
for my own information. What follows has another (and I hope 
more disinterested) purpose. In humouring my mistake. Miss Hav- 
isham, you punished — practised on — perhaps you will supply 
whatever term expresses your intention, without offence — your 
self-seeking relations 1 " 

" I did. Why, they would have it so ! So would you. What has 
been my history, that I should be at the pains of entreating either 
them or you not to have it so ! You made your own snares. / 
never made them." 

Waiting until she was quiet again — for this, too, flashed out of 
her in a wild and sudden way — I went on. 

" I have been thrown among one family of your relations. Miss 
Havisham, and have been constantly among them since I went to 
London. I know them to have been as honestly under my delusion 
as I myself. And I should be false and base if I did not tell you, 
whether it is acceptable to you or no, and whether you are inclined 
to give credence to it or no, that you deeply wrong both Mr. 
Matthew Pocket and his son Herbert, if you suppose them to be 
otherwise than generous, upright, open, and incapable of anything 
designing or mean." 

"They are your friends," said Miss Havisham. 

"They made themselves my friends," said I, "when they sup- 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 309 

posed me to have superseded them ; and when Sarah Pocket, Miss 
Georgiana, and Mistress Camilla, were not my friends, I think." 

This contrasting of them with the rest seemed, I was glad to see, 
to do them good with her. She looked at me keenly for a little 
while, and then said quietly : 

" What do you want for them ? " 

" Only," said I, " that you would not confound them with the 
others. They may be of the same blood, but, believe me, they are not 
of the same nature." 

Still looking at me keenly, Miss Havisham repeated : 

" What do you want for them 1 " 

" I am not so cunning, you see," I said in answer, conscious that 
I reddened a little, " as that I could hide from you, even if I desired, 
that I do want something. Miss Havisham, if you could spare the 
money to do my friend Herbert a lasting service in life, but which 
from the nature of the case must be done without his knowledge, I 
could show you how." 

"Why must it be done without his knowledge?" she asked, set- 
tling her hands upon her stick, that she might regard me the more 
attentively. 

"Because," said I, "I began the service myself, more than two 
years ago, without his knowledge, and I don't want to be betrayed. 
Why I fail in my ability to finish it, I cannot explain. It is a 
part of the secret which is another person's and not mine." 

She gradually withdrew her eyes from me, and turned them on 
the fire. After watching it for what appeared in the silence and by 
the light of the slowly wasting candles to be a long time, she was 
roused by the collapse of some of the red coals, and looked towards 
me again — at first, vacantly — then, with a gradually concentrating 
attention. All this time, Estella knitted on. When Miss Havis- 
ham had fixed her attention on me, she said, speaking as if there 
had been no lapse in our dialogue : 

"What else?" 

"Estella," said I, turning to her now, and trying to command 
my trembling voice, "you know I love you. You know that I 
have loved you long and dearly." 

She raised her eyes to my face, on being thus addressed, and her 
fingers plied their work, and she looked at me with an unmoved 
countenance. I saw that Miss Havisham glanced from me to her, 
and from her to me. 

" I should have said this sooner, but for my long mistake. It 
induced me to hope that Miss Havisham meant us for one another. 
While I thought you could not help yourself, as it were, I refrained 
from saying it. But I must say it now." 



310 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

Preserving her unmoved countenance, and with her fingers still 
going, Estella shook her head. 

" I know," said I, in answer to that action ; "I know. I have 
no hope that I shall ever call you mine, Estella. I am ignorant 
what may become of me very soon, how poor I may be, or where I 
may go. Still, I love you. I have loved you ever since I first saw 
you in this house." 

Looking at me perfectly unmoved and with her fingers busy, she 
shook her head again. 

" It would have been cruel in Miss Havisham, horribly cruel, to 
practise on the susceptibility of a poor boy, and to torture me 
through all these years with a vain hope and an idle pursuit, if she 
had reflected on the gravity of what she did. But I think she did 
not. I think that in the endurance of her own trial, she forgot 
mine, Estella." 

I saw Miss Havisham put her hand to her heart and hold it 
there, as she sat looking by turns at Estella and at me. 

" It seems," said Estella, very calmly, " that there are sentiments, 
fancies — I don't know how to call them — which I am not able 
to comprehend. When you say you love me, I know what you 
mean, as a form of words ; but nothing more. You address noth- 
ing in my breast, you touch nothing there. I don't care for what 
you say at all. I have tried to warn you of this ; now, have I not? " 

I said in a miserable manner, " Yes." 

" Yes. But you would not be warned, for you thought I did 
not mean it. Now, did you not think so ? " 

" I thought and hoped you could not mean it. You, so young, 
untried, and beautiful, Estella ! Surely it is not in Nature." 

" It is in my nature," she returned. And then she added, with 
a stress upon the words, "It is in the nature formed within me. 
I make a great difference between you and all other people when I 
say so much. I can do no more." 

"Is it not true," said I, " that Bentley Drummle is in town here, 
and pursuing you ? " 

" It is quite true," she replied, referring to him with the indif- 
ference of utter contempt. 

" That you encourage him, and ride out with him, and that he 
dines with you this very day % " 

She seemed a little surprised that I should know it, but again 
replied, " Quite true." 

" You cannot love him, Estella 1 " 

Her fingers stopped for the first time, as she retorted rather 
angrily, " What have I told you % Do you still think, in spite of 
it, that I do not mean what I say ? " 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 311 

" You would never marry him, Estella 1 " 

She looked towards Miss Havisham, and considered for a mo- 
ment with her work in her hands. Then she said, " \Yhy not tell 
you the truth 1 I am going to be married to him." 

I dropped my face into my hands, but was able to control myself 
better than I could have expected, considering what agony it gave 
me to hear her say those words. When I raised my face again, 
there was such a ghastly look upon Miss Havisham's, that it im- 
pressed me, even in my passionate hurry and grief. 

" Estella, dearest, dearest Estella, do not let Miss Havisham lead 
you into this fatal step. Put me aside for ever — you have done 
so, I well know — but bestow yourself on some worthier person 
than Drummle. Miss Havisham gives you to him, as the greatest 
slight and injury that could be done to the many far better men who 
admire you, and to the few who truly love you. Among those few, 
there may be one who loves you even as dearly, though he has not 
loved you as long, as I. Take him, and I can bear it better for 
your sake ! " 

My earnestness awoke a wonder in her that seemed as if it would 
have been touched with compassion, if she could have rendered me 
at all intelligible to her own mind. 

" I am going," she said again, in a gentler voice, " to be married 
to him. The preparations for my marriage are making, and I shall 
be married soon. Why do you injuriously introduce the name of 
my mother by adoption ? It is my own act." 

" Your own act, Estella, to fling yourself away upon a brute ? " 

" On whom should I fling myself away ? " she retorted, with a 
smile. " Should I fling myself away upon the man who would the 
soonest feel (if people do feel such things) that I took nothing to 
him ? There ! It is done. I shall do well enough, and so will 
my husband. As to leading me into what you call this fatal step, 
Miss Havisham would have had me wait, and not many yet ; but 
I am tired of the life I have led, which has very few charms for 
me, and I am willing enough to change it. Say no more. We 
shall never understand each other." 

" Such a mean brute, such a stupid brute ! " I urged in despair. 

"Don't be afraid of my being a blessing to him," said Estella; 
" I shall not be that. Come ! Here is my hand. Do we part on 
this, you visionary boy or man ? " 

" Estella ! " I answered, as my bitter tears fell fast on her 
hand, do what I would to restrain them ; " even if I remained in 
England and could hold my head up with the rest, how could I see 
you Drummle's wife ? " 

" Nonsense," she returned, " nonsense. This will pass in no time." 



312 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

" Never, Estelk ! " 

" You will get me out of your thoughts in a week." 

"Out of ^y thoughts ! You are part of my existence, part of 
myself. You have been in every line I have ever read, since I first 
came here, the rough common boy whose poor heart you wounded 
even then. You have been in every prospect I have ever seen since 
— on the river, on the sails of the ships, on the marshes, in the 
clouds, in the light, in the darkness, in the wind, in the woods, in 
the sea, in the streets. You have been the embodiment of every 
graceful fancy that my mind has ever become acquainted with. 
The stones of which the strongest London buildings are made, are 
not more real, or more impossible to be displaced by your hands, 
than your presence and influence have been to me, there and every- 
where, and will be. Estella, to the last hour of my life, you can- 
not choose but remain part of my character, part of the little good 
in me, part of the evil. But, in this separation I associate you only 
with the good, and I will faithfully hold you to that always, for 
you must have done me far more good than harm, let me feel now 
what sharp distress I may. God bless you, God forgive you ! " 

In what ecstasy of unhappiness I got these broken words out 
of myself, I don't know. The rhapsody welled up within me, like 
blood from an inward wound, and gushed out. I held her hand to 
my lips some lingering moments, and so I left her. But ever 
afterwards, I remembered — and soon afterwards with stronger 
reason — that while Estella looked at me merely with incredulous 
wonder, the spectral figure of Miss Havisham, her hand still cover- 
ing her heart, seemed all resolved into a ghastly stare of pity and 
remorse. 

All done, all gone ! So much was done and gone, that when I 
went out at the gate, the light of day seemed of a darker colour 
than when I went in. For a while, I hid myself among some lanes 
and bye-paths, and then struck off to walk aU the way to London. 
For, I had by that time come to myself so far, as to consider that I 
could not go back to the inn and see Drummle there ; that I could 
not bear to sit upon the coach and be spoken to ; that I could do 
nothing half so good for myself as tire myself out. 

It was past midnight when I crossed London Bridge. Pursuing 
the narrow intricacies of the streets which at that time tended 
westward near the Middlesex shore of the river, my readiest access 
to the Temple was close by the river-side, through Whitefriars. 
I was not expected till to-morrow, but I had my keys, and, if 
Herbert were gone to bed, could get to bed myself without disturb- 
ing him. 

As it seldom happened that I came in at that Whitefriars gate 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 313 

after the Temple Avas closed, and as I was very muddy and weary, 
I did not take it ill that the night-porter examined me with much 
attention as he held the gate a little way open for me to pass in. 
To help his memory I mentioned my name. 

"I was not quite sure, sir, but I thought so. Here's a note, 
sir. The messenger that brought it, said would you be so good 
as read it by my lantern ? " 

Much surprised by the request, I took the note. It was directed 
to Philip Pip, Esquire, and on the top of the superscription were 
the words, "Please kead this here." I opened it, the watch- 
man holding up his light, and read inside, in Wemmick's writing ; 

"Don't go Home." 



CHAPTER XLV. 

Turning from the Temple gate as soon as I had read the warn- 
ing, I made the best of my way to Fleet-street, and there got a 
late hackney chariot and drove to the Hummums in Co vent Gar- 
den. In those times a bed was always to be got there at any 
hour of the night, and the chamberlain, letting me in at his ready 
wicket, lighted the candle next in order on his shelf, and showed 
me straight into the bedroom next in order on his list. It was a 
sort of vault on the ground floor at the back, with a despotic mon- 
ster of a four-post bedstead in it, straddling over the whole place, 
putting one of his arbitrary legs into the fireplace, and another 
into the doorway, and squeezing the wretched little washing-stand 
in quite a Divinely Righteous manner. 

As I had asked for a night-light, the chamberlain had brought 
me in, before he left me, the good old constitutional rush-light of 
those virtuous days — an object like the ghost of a walking-cane, 
which instantly broke its back if it were touched, which nothing 
could ever be lighted at, and which was placed in solitary confine- 
ment at the bottom of a high tin tower, perforated with round 
holes that made a staringly wide-awake pattern on the walls. 
When I had got into bed, and lay there, footsore, weary, and 
wretched, I found that I could no more close my own eyes than 
I could close the eyes of this foolish Argus. And thus, in the 
gloom and death of night, we stared at one another. 

What a doleful night ! How anxious, how dismal, how long ! 
There was an inhospitable smell in the room, of cold soot and hot 
dust ; and, as I looked up into the corners of the tester over my 
head, I thought what a number of blue-bottle files from the 




don't go home ! ^* 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 315 

butcher's, and earwigs from the market, and grubs from the 
country, must be holding on up there, lying by for next summer. 
This led me to speculate whether any of them ever tumbled down, 
and then I fancied that I felt Hght falls on my face — a disagree- 
able turn of thought, suggesting other and more objectionable 
approaches up my back. When I had lain awake a little while, 
those extraordinary voices with which silence teems, began to 
make themselves audible. The closet whispered, the fireplace 
sighed, the little washing-stand ticked, and one guitar-string 
played occasionally in the chest of drawers. At about the same 
time, the eyes on the wall acquired a new expression, and in every 
one of those staring rounds I saw written, Dont go Home. 

Whatever night-fancies and night-noises crowded on me, they 
never warded off this Don't go Home. It plaited itself into 
whatever I thought of, as a bodily pain would have done. Not 
long before, I had read in the newspapers how a gentleman un- 
known had come to the Hummums in the night, and had gone to 
bed, and had destroyed himself, and had been found in the morn- 
ing weltering in blood. It came into my head that he must have 
occupied this very vault of mine, and I got out of bed to assure 
myself that there were no red marks about ; then opened the door 
to look out into the passages, and cheer myself with the compan- 
ionship of a distant light, near which I knew the chamberlain to 
be dozing. But all this time, why I was not to go home, and 
what had happened at home, and when I should go home, and 
whether Provis was safe at home, were questions occupying my 
mind so busily, that one might have supposed there could be no 
more room in it for any other theme. Even when I thought of 
Estella, and how we had parted that day for ever, and when I 
recalled all the circumstances of our parting, and all her looks and 
tones, and the action of her fingers while she knitted — even then 
I was pursuing, here and there and everywhere, the caution Don't 
go home. When at last I dozed, in sheer exhaustion of mind and 
body, it became a vast shadowy verb which I had to conjugate. 
Imperative mood, present tense : Do not thou go home, let him 
not go home, let us not go home, do not ye or you go home, let 
not them go home. Then, potentially : I may not and I cannot 
go home ; and I might not, could not, would not, and should not go 
home ; until I felt that I was going distracted, and rolled over on 
the pillow, and looked at the staring rounds upon the wall again. 

I had left directions that I was to be called at seven ; for it 
was plain that I must see Wemmick before seeing any one else, 
and equally plain that this was a case in which his Walworth sen- 
timents, only, could be taken. It was a relief to get out of the 



31G GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

room where the night had been so miserable, and I needed no 
second knocking at the door to startle me from my uneasy bed. 

The Castle battlements arose upon my view at eight o'clock. 
The little servant happening to be- entering the fortress with two 
hot rolls, I passed through the postern and crossed the drawbridge, 
in her company, and so came without announcement into the pres- 
ence of Wemmick as he was making tea for himself and the Aged. 
An open door afforded a perspective view of the Aged in bed. 

"Halloa, Mr. Pip!" said Wemmick. "You did come home, 
then?" 

"Yes," I returned; "but I didn't go home." 

"That's all right," said he, rubbing his hands. "I left a note 
for you at each of the Temple gates, on the chance. Which gate 
did you come to ? " 

I told him. 

" I'll go round to the others in the course of the day and destroy 
the notes," said Wemmick; "it's a good rule never to leave docu- 
mentary evidence if you can help it, because you don't know when 
it may be put in. I'm going to take a liberty with you — Would 
you mind toasting this sausage for the Aged P. ? " 

I said I should be delighted to do it. 

" Then you can go about your work, Mary Anne," said Wem- 
mick to the little servant ; " which leaves us to ourselves, don't 
you see, Mr. Pip ? " he added, winking, as she disappeared. 

I thanked him for his friendship and caution, and our discourse 
proceeded in a low tone, while I toasted the Aged's sausage and he 
buttered the crumb of the Aged's roll. 

" Now, Mr. Pip, you know," said Wemmick, "you and I under- 
stand one another. We are in our private and personal capacities, 
and we have been engaged in a confidential transaction before to- 
day. Official sentiments are one thing. We are extra official." 

I cordially assented. I was so very nervous, that I had already 
lighted the Aged's sausage like a torch, and been obliged to blow 
it out. 

"I accidentally heard, yesterday morning," said Wemmick, 
" being in a certain place where I once took you -^ even between 
you and me, it's as well not to mention names when avoidable " 

"Much better not," said I. " I understand you." 

"I heard there by chance, yesterday morning," said Wemmick, 
" that a certain person not altogether of uncolonial pursuits, and 
not unpossessed of portable property — I don't know who it may 
really be — we won't name this person " 

" Not necessary," said I. 

" — had made some little stir in a certain part of the world 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 317 

where a good many people go, not always in gratification of their 
own inclinations, and not quite irrespective of the government 
expense " 

In watching his face, I made quite a firework of the Aged's 
sausage, and gi-eatly discomposed both my own attention and 
Wemmick's ; for which I apologised. 

" — by disappearing from such place, and being no more heard 
of thereabouts. From which," said Wemmick, "conjectures had 
been raised and theories formed. I also heard that you at your 
chambers in Garden-court, Temple, had been watched, and might 
be watched again." 

" By whom ? " said I. 

" I wouldn't go into that," said Wemmick, evasively, " it might 
clash with official responsibilities. I heard it, as I have in my 
time heard other curious things in the same place. I don't tell it 
you on information received. I heard it." 

He took the toasting-fork and sausage from me as he spoke, and 
set forth the Aged's breakfast neatly on a little tray. Previous to 
placing it before him, he went into the Aged's room with a clean 
white cloth, and tied the same under the old gentleman's chin, and 
propped him up, and put his nightcap on one side, and gave him 
quite a rakish air. Then he placed his breakfast before him with 
great care, and said, " All right, ain't you. Aged P. ? " To which 
the cheerful Aged replied, " All right, John, my boy, all right ! " 
As there seemed to be a tacit understanding that the Aged was not 
in a presentable state, and was therefore to be considered invisible, I 
made a pretence of being in complete ignorance of these proceed- 
ings. 

" This watching of me at my chambers (which I have once had 
reason to suspect)," I said to Wemmick when he came back, "is 
inseparable from the person to whom you have adverted ; is it ? " 

Wemmick looked very serious. " I couldn't undertake to say 
that, of my own knowledge. I mean, I couldn't undertake to say 
it was at first. But it either is, or it will be, or it's in great dan- 
ger of being," 

As I saw that he was restrained by fealty to Little Britain from 
saying as much as he could, and as I knew with thankfulness to 
him how far out of his way he went to say what he did, I could 
not press him. But I told him, after a little meditation over the 
fire, that I would like to ask him a question, subject to his answer- 
ing or not answering, as he deemed right, and sure that his course 
would be right. He paused in his breakfast, and crossing his arms, 
and pinching his shirt-sleeves (his notion of indoor comfort was to 
sit without any coat), he nodded to me once, to put my question. 



318 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

" You have heard of a man of bad character, whose true name is 
Compeyson ? " 

He answered with one other nod. 

" Is he living ? " 

One other nod. 

" Is he in London ? " 

He gave me one other nod, compressed the post-office exceed- 
ingly, gave me one last nod, and went on with his breakfast. 

"Now," said Wemmick, "questioning being over;" which he 
emphasised and repeated for my guidance ; "I come to what I did, 
after hearing what I heard. I went to Garden-court to find you ; 
not finding you, I went to Clarriker's to find Mr, Herbert." 

" And him you found ? " said I, with great anxiety. 

" And him I found. Without mentioning any names or going 
into any details, I gave him to understand that if he was aware of 
anybody - — Tom, Jack, or Richard — being about the chambers, or 
about the immediate neighbourhood, he had better get Tom, Jack, 
or Richard, out of the way while you were out of the way." 

" He would be greatly puzzled what to do ? " 

"He ivas puzzled what to do ; not the less, because I gave him 
my opinion that it was not safe to try to get Tom, Jack, or Richard, 
too far out of the way at present. Mr, Pip, I'll tell you some- 
thing. Under existing circumstances there is no place like a great 
city when you are once in it. Don't break cover too soon. Lie 
close. Wait till things slacken, before you try the open, even for 
foreign air." 

I thanked him for his valuable advice, and asked him what 
Herbert had done 1 

"Mr. Herbert," said Wemmick, "after being all of a heap for 
half an hour, struck out a plan. He mentioned to me as a secret, 
that he is courting a young lady who has, as no doubt you are 
aware, a bedridden Pa. Which Pa, having been in the Purser line 
of life, lies abed in a bow- window where he can see the ships sail 
up and down the river. You are acquainted with the young lady, 
most probably ? " 

"Not personally," said I. 

The truth was, that she had objected to me as an expensive 
companion who did Herbert no good, and that, when Herbert had 
first proposed to present me to her, she had received the proposal 
with such very moderate warmth, that Herbert had felt himself 
obliged to confide the state of the case to me, with a view to the 
lapse of a little time before I made her acquaintance. When I had 
begun to advance Herbert's prospects by stealth, I had been able 
to bear this with cheerful philosophy; he and his affianced, for 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 319 

their part, had naturally not been very anxious to introduce a third 
person into tlieir interviews; and thus, although I was assured 
that I had risen in Clara's esteem, and although the young lady 
and I had long regularly interchanged messages and remembrances 
by Herbert, I had never seen her. However, I did not trouble 
Wemmick with those particulars. 

"The house with the bow- window," said Wemmick, "being by 
the river-side, down the Pool there between Limehouse and Green- 
wich, and being kept, it seems, by a very respectable widow, who has 
a furnished upper floor to let, Mr. Herbert put it to me, what did I 
think of that as a temporary tenement for Tom, Jack, or Richard ? 
Now, I thought very well of it, for three reasons I'll give you. 
That is to say. Firstly. It's altogether out of all your beats, and 
is well away from the usual heap of streets great and small. Sec- 
ondly. Without going near it yourself, you could always hear of 
the safety of Tom, Jack, or Richard, through Mr. Herbert. Thirdly. 
After a while and when it might be prudent, if you should want to 
slip Tom, Jack, or Richard, on board a foreign packet-boat, there 
he is — -ready." 

Much comforted by these considerations, I thanked Wemmick 
again and again, and begged him to proceed. 

" Well, sir ! Mr. Herbert threw himself into the business with 
a will, and by nine o'clock last night he housed Tom, Jack, or 
Richard — whichever it may be — you and I don't want to know 
— quite successfully. At the old lodgings it was understood that 
he was summoned to Dover, and in fact he was taken down the 
Dover road and cornered out of it. Now, another great advantage 
of all this is, that it was done without you, and when, if any one 
was concerning himself about your movements, you must be known 
to be ever so many miles off, and quite otherwise engaged. This 
diverts suspicion and confuses it ; and for the same reason I rec- 
ommended that even if you came back last night, you should not 
go home. It brings in more confusion, and you want confusion." 

Wemmick, having finished his breakfast, here looked at his 
watch, and began to get his coat on. 

"And now, Mr. Pip," said he, with his hands still in the sleeves, 
" I have probably done the most 1 can do ; but if I can ever do 
more — from a Walworth point of view, and in a strictly private 
and personal capacity — I shall be glad to do it. Here's the 
address. There can be no harm in your going here to-night and 
seeing for yourself that all is well with Tom, Jack, or Richard, 
before you go home — which is another reason for your not going 
home last night. But after you have gone home, don't go back 
here. You are very welcome, I am sure, Mr. Pip ; " his hands 



320 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

were now out of his sleeves, and I was shaking them; "and let 
me finally impress one important point upon you." He laid his 
hands upon my shoulders, and added in a solemn whisper : " Avail 
yourself of this evening to lay hold of his portable property. You 
don't know what may happen to him. Don't let anything happen 
to the portable property." 

Quite despairing of making my mind clear to Wemmick on this 
point, I forbore to try. 

" Time's up," said Wemmick, " and I must be off. If you had 
nothing more pressing to do than to keep here till dark, that's 
w^hat I should advise. You look very much worried, and it would 
do you good to have a perfectly quiet day "s^ith the Aged — he'll 
be up presently — and a little bit of you remember the pig?" 

"Of course," said I. 

" Well ; and a little bit of him. That sausage you toasted was 
his, and he was in all respects a first-rater. Do try him, if it is 
only for old acquaintance' sake. Good bye, Aged Parent ! " in a 
cheery shout. 

"All right, John ; all right, my boy ! " piped the old man from 
within. 

I soon fell asleep before Wemmick's fire, and the Aged and I 
enjoyed one another's society by falling asleep before it more or 
less all day. We had loin of pork for dinner, and greens grown 
on the estate, and I nodded at the Aged with a good intention 
whenever I failed to do it drowsily. When it was quite dark, I 
left the Aged preparing the fire for toast ; and I inferred from the 
number of tea-cups, as well as from his glances at the two little 
doors in the wall, that Miss Skiffins was expected. 



CHAPTER XLYI. 

Eight o'clock bad struck before I got into the air that was 
scented, not disagreeably, by the chips and shavings of the long- 
shore boat-builders, and mast, oar, and block makers. All that 
water-side region of the upper and lower Pool below Bridge, was 
unknown ground to me, and when I struck down by the river, I 
found that the spot I wanted was not where I had supposed it to 
be, and was anything but easy to find. It was called Mill Pond 
Bank, Chinks's Basin ; and I had no other guide to Chinks's Basin 
than the Old Green Copper Rope- Walk. 

It matters not what stranded ships repairing in dry docks I lost 
myself among, what old hulls of ships in course of being knocked 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 321 

to pieces, what ooze and slime and other dregs of tide, what yards 
of ship-builders and ship-breakers, what rusty anchors blindly 
biting into the ground though for years off duty, what mountainous 
country of accumulated casks and timber, how many rope-walks 
that were not the Old Green Copper. After several times falling 
short of my destination and as often overshooting it, I came 
unexpectedly round a corner, upon Mill Pond Bank. It was a 
fresh kind of place, all circumstances considered, where the wind 
from the river had room to turn itself round ; and there were two 
or three trees in it, and there was the stump of a ruined windmill, 
and there was the Old Green Copper Rope- Walk — whose long 
and narrow vista I could trace in the moonlight, along a series of 
wooden frames set in the ground, that looked like superannuated 
haymaking-rakes which had grown old and lost most of their teeth. 

Selecting from the few queer houses upon Mill Pond Bank, a 
house with a wooden front and three stories of bow-window (not 
bay-window, which is another thing), I l(ij€fj^(j, at the plate upon 
the door, and read there Mrs. Whimple. -r^Bat being the name I 
wanted, I knocked, and an elderly woman of a pleasant and 
thriving appearance responded. She was immediately deposed, 
however, by Herbert, who silently led me into the parlour and 
shut the door. It was an odd sensation to see his very familiar 
face established quite at home in that very unfamiliar room and 
region ; and I found myself looking at him, much as I looked at 
the corner cupboard with the glass and china, the shells upon the 
chimney-piece, and the coloured engravings on the wall, representing 
the death of Captain Cook, a ship-launch, and his Majesty King 
George the Third in a state coachman's wig, leather breeches, and 
top-boots, on the terrace at Windsor. 

"All is well, Handel," said Herbert, "and he is quite satisfied, 
though eager to see you. My dear girl is with her father ; and 
if you'll wait till she comes down, I'll make you known to her, 
and then we'll go upstairs. That's her father." 

I had become aware of an alarming growling overhead, and had 
probably expressed the fact in my countenance^ 

"I am afraid he is a sad old rascal," ^md Herbert, smiling, 
"but I have never seen him. Don't you smell rum? He is 
always at it." 

" At rum ? " said I. 

"Yes," returned Herbert, "and you may suppose how mild it 
makes his gout. He persists, too, in keeping all the provisions 
upstairs in his room, and serving them out. He keeps them on 
shelves over his head, and will weigh them all. His room must 
be like a chandler's shop." 



322 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

While he thus spoke, the growling noise became a prolonged 
roar, and then died away. 

"What else can be the consequence," said Herbert, in explana- 
tion, "if he ivill cut the cheese 1 A man with the gout in his 
right hand — and everywhere else — can't expect to get through a 
Double Gloucester without hurting himself." 

He seemed to have hurt himself very much, for he gave another 
furious roar. 

" To have Provis for an upper lodger is quite a godsend to Mrs. 
Whimple," said Herbert, "for of course people in general won't 
stand that noise. A curious place, Handel ; isn't it ? " 

It was a curious place, indeed ; but remarkably well kept and 
clean. 

"Mrs. Whimple," said Herbert, when I told him so, "is the 
best of housewives, and I really do not know what my Clara 
would do without her motherly help. For, Clara has no mother 
of her own, Handel, and no relation in the world but old Gruff- 
andgrim." 

"Surely that's not his name, Herbert?" 

"No, no," said Herbert, "that's my name for him. His name 
is Mr. Barley. But what a blessing it is for the son of my father 
and mother, to love a girl who has no relations, and who can 
never bother herself, or anybody else, about her family ? " 

Herbert had told me on former occasions, and now reminded 
me, that he first knew Miss Clara Barley when she was completing 
her education at an establishment at Hammersmith, and that on 
her being recalled home to nurse her father, he and she had confided 
their affection to the motherly Mrs. Whimple, by whom it had 
been fostered and regulated with equal kindness and discretion 
ever since. It was understood that nothing of a tender nature 
could possibly be confided to Old Barley, by reason of his being 
totally unequal to the consideration of any subject more psycho- 
logical than Gout, Rum, and Purser's stores. 

As we were thus conversing in a low tone while Old Barley's 
sustained growl vibrated in the beam that crossed the ceiling, the 
room door opened, ^d a very pretty, slight, dark-eyed girl of 
twenty or so, came in with a basket in her hand : whom Herbert 
tenderly relieved of the basket, and presented blushing, as "Clara." 
She really was a most charming girl, and might have passed for a 
captive faiiy, whom that truculent Ogre, Old Barley, had pressed 
into his service. 

"Look here," said Herbert, showing me the basket, with a com- 
passionate and tender smile after we had talked a little ; " here's 
poor Clara's supper, served out every night. Here's her allowance 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 323 

of bread, and here's her slice of cheese, and here's her rum — which 
I drink. This is Mr. Barley's breakfast for to-morrow, served out 
to be cooked. Two mutton chops, three potatoes, some split peas, 
a little flour, two ounces of butter, a pinch of salt, and all this 
black pepper. It's stewed up together, and taken hot, and it's a 
nice thing for the gout, I should think ! " 

There was something so natural and winning in Clara's resigned 
way of looking at these stores in detail, as Herbert pointed them 
out, — - something so confiding, loving and innocent, in her modest 
manner of yielding herself to Herbert's embracing arm — and some- 
thing so gentle in her, so much needing protection on Mill Pond 
Bank, by Chinks's Basin, and the Old Green Copper Rope- Walk, 
with Old Barley growling in the beam — that I would not have 
undone the engagement between her and Herbert, for all the money 
in the pocket-book I had never opened. 

I was looking at her with pleasure and admiration, when sud- 
denly the growl swelled into a roar again, and a frightful bumping 
noise was heard above, as if a giant with a wooden leg were trying 
to bore it through the ceiling to come at us. Upon this Clara said 
to Herbert, " Papa wants me, darling ! " and ran away. 

" There is an unconscionable old shark for you ! " said Her- 
bert. " What do you suppose he wants now, Handel ? " 

" I don't know," said I. " Something to drink ? " 

" That's it ! " cried Herbert, as if I had made a guess of extraor- 
dinary merit. "He keeps his grog ready-mixed in a little tub on the 
table. Wait a moment, and you'll hear Clara lift him up to take 
some. — - There he goes ! " Another roar, with a prolonged shake 
at the end. " Now," said Herbert, as it was succeeded by silence, 
" he's drinking. Now," said Herbert, as the growl resounded in 
the beam once more, " he's dowm again on his back ! " 

Clara returned soon afterwards, and Herbert accompanied me 
upstairs to see our charge. As we passed Mr. Barley's door, he 
was heard hoarsely muttering within, in a strain that rose and fell 
like wind, the following refrain ; in which I substitute good wishes 
for something quite the reverse. 

"Ahoy ! Bless your eyes, here's old Bill Barley. Here's old BiU 
Barley, bless your eyes. Here's old Bill Barley on the flat of his 
back, by the Lord. Lying on the flat of his back, like a drifting old 
dead flounder, here's your old Bill Barley, bless your eyes. Ahoy ! 
Bless you." 

In this strain of consolation, Herbert informed me the invisible 
Barley would commune with himself by the day and night together ; 
often while it was light, having, at the same time, one eye at a 



324 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

telescope which was fitted on his bed for the convenience of sweep- 
ing the river. 

In his two cabin rooms at the top of the house, which were fresh 
and airy, and in which Mr. Barley was less audible than below, I 
found Proves comfortably settled. He expressed no alarm, and 
seemed to feel none that was worth mentioning ; but it struck me 
that he was softened — indefinably, for I could not have said how, 
and could never afterwards recall how when I tried ; but certainly. 

The opportunity that the day's rest had given me for reflection 
had resulted in my fully determining to say nothing to him respect- 
ing Compeyson. For anything I knew, his animosity towards the 
man might otherwise lead to his seeking him out and rushing on 
his own destruction. Therefore, when Herbert and I sat down 
with him by his fire, I asked him first of all whether he relied on 
Wemmick's judgment and sources of information 1 

"Ay, ay, dear boy!" he answered, with a grave nod, " Jaggers 
knows." 

"Then, I have talked with Wemmick," said I, "and have come 
to tell you what caution he gave me and what advice." 

This I did accurately, with the reservation just mentioned ; and 
I told him how Wemmick had heard, in Newgate prison (whether 
from officers or prisoners I could not say), that he was under some 
suspicion, and that my chambers had been watched ; how "Wemmick 
had recommended his keeping close for a time, and my keeping 
away from him ; and what Wemmick had said about getting him 
abroad. I added, that of course, when the time came, I should go 
with him, or should follow close upon him, as might be safest in 
W^emmick's judgment. What was to follow that, I did not touch 
upon ; neither indeed was I at all clear or comfortable about it in 
my own mind, now that I saw him in that softer condition, and in 
declared peril for my sake. As to altering my way of living, by 
enlarging my expenses, I put it to him whether in our present 
unsettled and difficult circumstances, it would not be simply ridicu- 
lous, if it were no worse ? 

He could not deny this, and indeed was very reasonable through- 
out. His coming back was a venture, he said, and he had always 
known it to be a venture. He would do nothing to make it a des- 
perate venture, and he had very little fear of his safety with such 
good help. 

Herbert, who had been looking at the fire and pondering, here 
said that something had come into his thoughts arising out of 
Wemmick's suggestion, which it might be worth while to pursue. 
" We are both good watermen, Handel, and could take him down 
the river ourselves when the right time comes. No boat would 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 325 

then be hired for the purpose, and no boatmen ; that would save 
at least a chance of suspicion, and any chance is worth saving. 
Never mind the season ; don't you think it might be a good thing 
if you began at once to keep a boat at the Temple stairs, and 
were in the habit of rowing up and down the river ? You fall into 
that habit, and then who notices or minds 1 Do it twenty or fifty 
times, and there is nothing special in your doing it the twenty-first 
or fifty-first." 

I liked this scheme, and Provis was quite elated by it. We agreed 
that it should be carried into execution, and that Provis should 
never recognise us if we came below Bridge and rode past Mill 
Pond Bank. But, we further agreed that he should pull down the 
blind in that part of his window which gave upon the east, when- 
ever he saw us and all was right. 

Our conference being now ended, and everything arranged, I rose 
to go ; remarking to Herbert that he and I had better not go home 
together, and that I would take half an hour's start of him. " I 
don't like to leave you here," I said to Provis, "though I cannot 
doubt your being safer here than near me. Good bye ! " 

"Dear boy," he answered, clasping my hands, "I don't know 
when we may meet again, and I don't like Good bye. Say Good 
Night ! " 

" Good night ! Herbert will go regularly between us, and when 
the time comes you may be certain I shall be ready. Good night, 
Good night ! " 

We thought it best that he should stay in his own rooms, and 
we left him on the landing outside his door, holding a light over the 
stair-rail to light us downstairs. Looking back at him, I thought 
of the first night of his return when our positions were reversed, 
and when I little supposed my heart could ever be as heavy and 
anxious at parting from him as it was now. 

Old Barley was growling and swearing when we repassed his 
door, with no appearance of having ceased or of meaning to cease. 
When we got to the foot of the stairs, I asked Herbert whether he 
had preserved the name of Provis 1 He replied, certainly not, and 
that the lodger was Mr. Campbell. He also explained that the 
utmost known of Mr. Campbell there, was, that he (Herbert) had 
Mr. Campbell consigned to him, and felt a strong personal interest 
in his being well cared for, and living a secluded life. So, when 
we went into the parlour where Mrs. Whimple and Clara were 
seated at work, I said nothing of my own interest in Mr. Campbell, 
but kept it to myself. 

When I had taken leave of the pretty gentle dark-eyed girl, and 
of the motherly woman who had not outlived her honest sympathy 



326 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

with a little affair of true love, I felt as if the Old Green Copper 
Rope-Walk had grown quite a different place. Old Barley might 
be as old as the hills, and might swear like a whole field of troopers, 
but there were redeeming youth and trust and hope enough in 
Chinks's Basin to fill it to overflowing. And then I thought of 
Estella, and of our parting, and went home very sadly. 

All things were as quiet in the Temple as ever I had seen them. 
The windows of the rooms of that side, lately occupied by Pro vis, 
were dark and still, and there was no lounger in Garden-court. I 
walked past the fountain twice or thrice before I descended the steps 
that were between me and my rooms, but I was quite alone. Her- 
bert coming to my bedside when he came in — for I went straight 
to bed, dispirited and fatigued — made the same report. Opening 
one of the windows after that, he looked out into the moonlight, 
and told me that the pavement was as solemnly empty as the pave- 
ment of any Cathedral at that same hour. 

Next day, I set myself to get the boat. It was soon done, and 
the boat was brought round to the Temple stairs, and lay where I 
could reach her within a minute or two. Then, I began to go out 
as for training and practice : sometimes alone, sometimes with Her- 
bert. I was often out in cold, rain, and sleet, but nobody took much 
note of me after I had been out a few times. At first, I kept above 
Blackfriars Bridge ; but as the hours of the tide changed, I took 
towards London Bridge. It was Old London Bridge in those 
days, and at certain states of the tide there was a race and fall of 
water there which gave it a bad reputation. But I knew well 
enough how to " shoot " the bridge after seeing it done, and so began 
to row about among the shipping in the Pool, and down to Erith. 
The first time I passed Mill Pond Bank, Herbert and I were pulling 
a pair of oars ; and, both in going and returning, we saw the blind 
towards the east come down. Herbert was rarely there less fre- 
quently than three times in a week, and he never brought me a 
single word of intelligence that was at all alarming. Still, I knew 
that there was cause for alarm, and I could not get rid of the no- 
tion of being watched. Once received, it is a haunting idea ; how 
many undesigning persons I suspected of watching me, it would be 
hard to calculate. 

In short, I was always full of fears for the rash man who was in 
hiding. Herbert had sometimes said to me that he found it pleas- 
ant to stand at one of our windows after dark, when the tide was 
running down, and to think that it was flowing, with everything it 
bore, towards Clara. But I thought with dread that it was flowing 
towards Magwitch, and that any black mark on its surface might 
be his pursuers, going swiftly, silently and surely, to take him. 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 327 



CHAPTER XLVII. 



Some weeks passed without bringing any change. We waited for 
Wemmick, and he made no sign. If I had never known him out 
of Little Britain, and had never enjoyed the privilege of being on a 
familiar footing at the Castle, I might have doubted him ; not so 
for a moment, knowing him as I did. 

My worldly affairs began to wear a gloomy appearance, and I was 
pressed for money by more than one creditor. Even I myself began 
to know the want of money (I mean of ready money in my own 
pocket), and to relieve it by converting some easily spared articles 
of jewellery into cash. But I had quite determined that it would 
be a heartless fraud to take more money from my patron in the 
existing state of my uncertain thoughts and plans. Therefore, I 
had sent him the unopened pocket-book by Herbert, to hold in his 
own keeping, and I felt a kind of satisfaction — whether it was a 
false kind or a true, I hardly know — in nofr having profited by his 
generosity since his revelation of himself. 

As the time wore on, an impression settled heavily upon me that 
Estella was married. Fearful of having it confirmed, though it was 
all but a conviction, I avoided the newspapers, and begged Her- 
bert (to whom I had confided the circumstances of our last inter- 
view) never to speak of her to me. Why I hoarded up this last 
wretched little rag of the robe of hope that was rent and given to 
the winds, how do I know ! Why did you who read this, commit 
that not dissimilar inconsistency of your own, last year, last month, 
last week ? 

It was an unhappy life that I lived, and its one dominant anxiety, 
towering over all its other anxieties like a high mountain above a 
range of mountains, never disappeared from my view. Still, no new 
cause for fear arose. Let me start from my bed as I would, with 
the terror fresh upon me that he was discovered ; let me sit listen- 
ing as I would, with dread for Herbert's returning step at night, 
lest it should be fleeter than ordinary, and winged with evil news ; 
for all that, and much more to like purpose, the round of things 
went on. Condemned to inaction and a state of constant restless- 
ness and suspense, I rowed about in my boat, and waited, waited, 
waited, as I best could. 

There were states of the tide when, having been down the river, 
I could not get back through the edcly-chafed arches and starlings 
of Old London Bridge ; then, I left my boat at a wharf near the 
Custom House, to be brought up afterwards to the Temple stairs. 
I was not averse to doing this, as it served to make me and my 



328 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

boat a commoner incident among the water-side people there. From 
this slight occasion, sprang two meetings that I have now to tell 
of. 

One afternoon, late in the month of February, I came ashore at 
the wharf at dusk. I had pulled down as far as Greenwich with 
the ebb tide, and had turned with the tide. It had been a fine bright 
day, but had become foggy as the sun dropped, and I had had to 
feel my way back among the shipping pretty carefully. Both in 
going and returning, I had seen the signal in his window, All well. 

As it was a raw evening and I was cold, I thought I would com- 
fort myself with dinner at once ; and as I had hours of dejection and 
solitude before me if I went home to the Temple, I thought I would 
afterwards go to the play. The theatre where Mr. Wopsle had 
achieved his questionable triumph, was in that water-side neighbour- 
hood (it is nowhere now), and to that theatre I resolved to go. 

I was aware that Mr. Wopsle had not succeeded in reviving the 
drama, but, on the contrary, had rather partaken of its decline. He 
had been ominously heard of, through the playbills, as a faithful 
Black, in connection with a little girl of noble birth, and a monkey. 
And Herbert had seen him as a predatory Tartar, of comic propen- 
sities, with a face like a red brick, and an outrageous hat all over bells. 

I dined at what Herbert and I used to call a Geographical 
chop-house — where there were maps of the world in porter-pot 
rims on every half-yard of the table-cloths, and charts of gravy on 
every one of the knives — to this day there is scarcely a single 
chop-house within the Lord Mayor's dominions which is not 
Geographical — and wore out the time in dozing over crumbs, 
staring at gas, and baking in a hot blast of dinners. By-and-bye, 
I roused myself and went to the play. 

There I found a virtuous boatswain in his Majesty's service — 
a most excellent man, though I could have wished his trousers 
not quite so tight in some places and not quite so loose in others 
— who knocked all the little men's hats over their eyes, though 
he was very generous and brave, and who wouldn't hear of any- 
body's paying taxes, though he was very patriotic. He had a bag 
of money in his pocket, like a pudding in the cloth, and on that 
property married a young person in bed-furniture, with great 
rejoicings ; the whole population of Portsmouth (nine in number 
at the last Census) turning out on the beach, to rub their own 
hands, and shake everybody else's, and sing, " Fill, fill ! " A 
certain dark-complexioned Swab, however, who wouldn't fill, or 
do anything else that was proposed to him, and whose heart was 
openly stated (by the boatswain) to be as black as his figure-head, 
proposed to two other Swabs to get all mankind into difficulties; 



I 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 329 

which was so effectually done (the Swab family having considerable 
political influence) that it took half the evening to set things 
right, and then it was only brought about through an honest 
little grocer with a white hat, black gaiters, and red nose, getting 
into a clock, with a gridiron, and listening, and coming out, and 
knocking everybody down from behind with the gridiron whom he 
couldn't confute with what he had overheard. This led to Mr. 
Wopsle's (who had never been heard of before) coming in with a 
star and garter on, as a plenipotentiary of great power direct from 
the Admiralty, to say that the Swabs were all to go to prison on 
the spot, and that he had brought the boatswain down the Union 
Jack, as a slight acknowledgment of his public services. The 
boatswain, unmanned for the first time, respectfully dried his 
eyes on the Jack, and then cheering up and addressing Mr. 
^Vopsle as Your Honour, solicited permission to take him by the 
fin. Mr. Wopsle conceding his fin with a gracious dignity, was 
immediately shoved into a dusty corner, while everybody danced 
a hornpipe ; and from that corner, surveying the public with a 
discontented eye, became aware of me. 

The second piece was the last new grand comic Christmas pan- 
tomime, in the first scene of which, it pained me to suspect that I 
detected Mr. Wopsle with red worsted legs under a highly mag- 
nified phosphoric countenance and a shock of red curtain-fringe 
for his hair, engaged in the manufacture of thunderbolts in a 
mine, and displaying great cowardice when his gigantic master 
came home (very hoarse) to dinner. But he presently presented 
himself under worthier circumstances; for, the Genius of Youthful 
Love being in want of assistance — on account of the parental 
brutality of an ignorant farmer who opposed the choice of his 
daughter's heart, by purposely falling upon the object in a flour 
sack, out of the first-floor ^^indow — summoned a sententious 
Enchanter ; and he, coming up from the antipodes rather un- 
steadily, after an apparently violent journey, proved to be Mr. 
Wopsle in a high-cro^vned hat, with a necromantic work in one 
volume under his arm. The business of this enchanter on earth 
being principally to be talked at, sung at, butted at, danced at, 
and flashed at with fires of various colours, he had a good deal 
of time on his hands. And I observed with great surprise, that 
he devoted it to staring in my direction as if he were lost in 
amazement. 

There was something so remarkable in the increasing glare of 
Mr. Wopsle's eye, and he seemed to be turning so many things 
over in his mind and to grow so confused, that I could not make 
it out. I sat thinking: of it. Ions: after he had ascended to the 



330 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

clouds in a large watch-case, and still I could not make it out. I 
was still thinking of it when I came out of the theatre an hour 
afterwards, and found him waiting for me near the door. 

" How do you do 1 " said I, shaking hands with him as we 
turned down the street together. "I saw that you saw me." 

" Saw you, Mr. Pip ! " he returned. " Yes, of course I saw 
you. But who else was there ? " 

"Who else?" 

"It is the strangest thing," said Mr. Wopsle, drifting into his 
lost look again ; "and yet I could swear to him." 

Becoming alarmed, I entreated Mr. Wopsle to explain his 
meaning. 

"Whether I should have noticed him at first but for your being 
there," said Mr. Wopsle, going on in the same lost way, "I can't 
be positive ; yet I think I should." 

Involuntarily I looked round me, as I was accustomed to look 
round me when I M^ent home; for, these mysterious words gave 
me a chill. 

"Oh! He can't be in sight," said Mr. Wopsle. "He went 
out, before I went off; I saw him go." 

Having the reason that I had for being suspicious, I even sus- 
pected this poor actor. I mistrusted a design to entrap me into 
some admission. Therefore, I glanced at him as we walked on 
together, but said nothing. 

"I had a ridiculous fancy that he must be with you, Mr. Pip, 
till I saw that you were quite unconscious of him, sitting behind 
you there like a ghost." 

My former chill crept over me again, but I was resolved not to 
speak yet, for it was quite consistent with his words that he might 
be set on to induce me to connect these references with Provis. Of 
course, I was perfectly sure and safe that Provis had not been there. 

" I dare say you wonder at me, Mr. Pip ; indeed, I see you do. 
But it is so very strange ! You'll hardly believe what I am going 
to tell you. I could hardly believe it myself, if you told me." 

"Indeed?" said I. 

" No, indeed. Mr. Pip, you remember in old times a certain 
Christmas Day, when you were quite a child, and I dined at 
Gargery's, and some soldiers came to the door to get a pair of 
handcuffs mended 1 " 

" I remember it very well." 

" And you remember that there was a chase after two convicts, 
and that we joined in it, and that Gargery took you on his back, 
and that I took the lead and you kept up with me as well as you 
could?" 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 331 

"I remember it all very well." Better tliaii he thought — 
except the last clause. 

"And you remember that we came up with the two in a ditch, 
and that there was a scuffle between them, and that one of them 
had been severely handled and much mauled about the face, by 
the other?" 

"I see it all before me." 

"And that the soldiers lighted torches, and put the two in the 
centre, and that we went on to see the last of them, over the 
black marshes, with the torchlight shining on their faces — I am 
particular about that ; with the torchlight shining on their faces, 
when there was an outer ring of dark night all about us ? " 

" Yes," said I. " I remember all that." 

"Then, Mr. Pip, one of those two prisoners sat behind you 
to-night. I saw him over your shoulder." 

" Steady ! " I thought. I asked him then, " Which of the two 
do you suppose you saw 1 " 

" The one who had been mauled," he answered readily, "and I'll 
swear I saw him ! The more I think of him, the more certain I 
am of him." 

" This is very curious ! " said I, with the best assumption I could 
put on, of its being nothing more to me. " Very curious indeeed ! " 

I cannot exaggerate the enhanced disquiet into which this con- 
versation threw me, or the special and peculiar terror I felt at Com- 
peyson's having been behind me "like a ghost." For, if he had 
ever been out of my thoughts for a few moments together since 
the hiding had begun, it was in those very moments when he 
was closest to me ; and to think that I should be so unconscious 
and off my guard after all my care, was as if I had shut an avenue 
of a hundred doors to keep him out, and then had found him at my 
elbow. I could not doubt either that he was there, because I was 
there, and that however slight an appearance of danger there might 
be about us, danger was always near and active. 

I put such questions to Mr. Wopsle as, When did the man come 
in ? He could not tell me that ; he saw me, and over my shoulder 
he saw the man. It was not until he had seen him for some time 
that he began to identify him ; but he had from the first vaguely 
associated him with me, and known him as somehow belonging to 
me in the old village time. How was he dressed ? Prosperously, 
but not noticeably otherwise ; he thought, in black. Was his face 
at all disfigured? No, he believed not. I believed not, too, for 
although in my brooding state I had taken no especial notice of the 
people behind me, I thought it likely that a face at aU disfigured 
would have attracted my attention. 



332 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

When Mr. Wopsle had imparted to me all that he could recall 
or I extract, and when I had treated him to a little appropriate 
refreshment after the fatigues of the evening, we parted. It was 
between twelve and one o'clock when I reached the Temple, and 
the gates were shut. iSTo one was near me when I went in and 
went home. 

Herbert had come in, and we held a very serious council by the 
fire. But there was nothing to be done, saving to communicate to 
Wemmick what I had that night found out, and to remind him 
that we waited for his hint. As I thought that I might compro- 
mise him if I went too often to the Castle, I made tliis communi- 
cation by letter. I wrote it before I went to bed and went out 
and posted it; and again no one was near me. Herbert and I 
agreed that we could do nothing else but be very cautious. And 
we were very cautious indeed — more cautious than before, if that 
were possible — and I for my part never went near Chinks's Basin, 
except when I rowed by, and then I only looked at Mill Pond Bank 
as I looked at anything else. 



CHAPTER XLVIII. 

The second of the two meetings referred to in the last chapter, 
occurred about a week after the first. I had again left my boat 
at the wharf below Bridge ; the time was an hour earlier in the 
afternoon ; and, undecided where to dine, I had strolled up into 
Cheapside, and was strolling along it, surely the most unsettled 
person in all the busy concourse, when a large hand was laid upon 
my shoulder, by some one overtaking me. It was Mr. Jaggers's 
hand, and he passed it through my arm. 

■ "As we are going in the same direction, Pip, we may walk 
together. Where are you bound for ? " 

"For the Temple, I think," said I. 

"Don't you know?" said Mr. Jaggers. 

"Well," I returned, glad for once to get the better of him in 
cross-examination, "I do not know, for I have not made up my 
mind." 

" You are going to dine ? " said Mr. Jaggers. " You don't mind 
admitting that, I suppose 1 " 

" No," I returned, " I don't mind admitting that." 

"And are not engaged?" 

"I don't mind admitting also, that I am not engaged." 

" Then," said Mr. Jaggers, "come and dine with me." 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 333 

I was going to excuse myself, when he added, " Wemmick's com- 
ing." So I changed my excuse into an acceptance — the few words 
I had uttered serving for the beginning of either — and we went 
along Cheapside and slanted off to Little Britain, while the lights 
were springing up brilliantly in the shop windows, and the street 
lamp-lighters, scarcely finding ground enough to plant their ladders 
on in the midst of the afternoon's bustle, were skipping up and 
down and running in and out, opening more red eyes in the gather- 
ing fog than my rushlight tower at the Hummums had opened 
white eyes in the ghostly wall. 

At the office in Little Britain there was the usual letter-writing, 
hand-washing, candle-snuffing, and safe-locking, that closed the busi- 
ness of the day. As I stood idle by Mr. Jaggers's fire, its rising and 
falling flame made the two casts on the shelf look as if they were 
playing a diabolical game at bo-peep with me ; while the pair of 
coarse fat office candles that dimly lighted Mr. Jaggers as he wrote 
in a corner, were decorated with dirty winding-sheets, as if in 
remembrance of a host of hanged clients. 

We went to Gerrard-street, all three together, in a hackney-coach : 
and as soon as we got there, dinner was served. Although I should 
not have thought of making, in that place, the most distant refer- 
ence by so much as a look to Wemmick's Walworth sentiments, yet 
I should have had no objection to catching his eye now and then 
in a friendly way. But it was not to be done. He turned his eyes 
on ]Mr. Jaggers whenever he raised them from the table, and was 
as dry and distant to me as if there were twin Wemmicks and this 
was the wi^ong one. 

" Did you send that note of Miss Havisham's to Mr. Pip, Wem- 
mick 1 " Mr. Jaggers asked, soon after we began dinner. 

" No, sir," returned Wemmick ; " it was going by post, when you 
brought Mr. Pip into the office. Here it is." He handed it to 
his principal, instead of to me. 

" It's a note of two lines, Pip," said Mr. Jaggers, handing it on, 
" sent up to me by Miss Havisham, on account of her not being 
sure of your address. She tells me that she wants to see you on a 
little matter of business you mentioned to her. You'll go down 1 " 

"Yes," said I, casting my eyes over the note, which was exactly 
in those terms. 

" When do you think of going down 1 " 

"I have an impending engagement," said I, glancing at Wem- 
mick, who was putting fish into the post-office, " that renders me 
rather uncertain of my time. At once, I think." 

" If Mr. Pip has the intention of going at once," said Wemmick 
to Mr. Jaggers, " he needn't write an answer, you know." 



334 GEEAT EXPECTATIONS. 

Receiving this as an intimation that it was best not to delay, I 
settled that I would go to-morrow, and said so. Wemmick drank 
a glass of wine and looked with a grimly satisfied air at Mr. Jag- 
gers, but not at me. 

" So, Pip ! Our friend the Spider," said Mr. Jaggers, " has played 
his cards. He has won the pool." 

It was as much as I could do to assent. 

"Hah ! He is a promising fellow — in his way — but he may 
not have it all his own way. The stronger will win in the end, 
but the stronger has to be found out first. If he should turn to, 
and beat her — " 

" Surely," I interrupted, with a burning face and heart, "you do 
not seriously think that he is scoundrel enough for that, Mr. 
Jaggers ? " 

" I didn't say so, Pip. I am putting a case. If he should turn 
to and beat her, he may possibly get the strength on his side ; if 
it should be a question of intellect, he certainly will not. It would 
be chance work to give an opinion how a fellow of that sort will 
turn out in such circumstances, because it's a toss-up between two 
results." 

" May I ask what they are ? " 

"A fellow like our friend the Spider," answered Mr. Jaggers, 
"either beats, or cringes. He may cringe and growl, or cringe 
and not growl ; but he either beats or cringes. Ask Wemmick his 
opinion." 

"Either beats or cringes," said Wemmick, not at aU addressing 
himself to me. 

" So, here's to Mrs. Bentley Drummle," said Mr. Jaggers, taking 
a decanter of choicer wine from his dumb-waiter, and filling for 
each of us and for himself, " and may the question of supremacy be 
settled to the lady's satisfaction ! To the satisfaction of the lady 
and the gentleman, it never will be. iN'ow, Molly, Molly, Molly, 
Molly, how slow you are to-day ! " 

She was at his elbow when he addressed her, putting a dish upon 
the table. As she Avithdrew her hands from it, she fell back a step 
or two, nervously muttering some excuse. And a certain action of 
her fingers as she spoke arrested my attention. 

" What's the matter 1 " said Mr. Jaggers. 

" Nothing. Only the subject we were speaking of," said I, " was 
rather painful to me." 

The action of her fingers was like the action of knitting. She 
stood looking at her master, not understanding whether she was 
free to go, or whether he had more to say to her and would call 
ber back if she did go. Her look was very intent. Surely, I had 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 335 

seen exactly such eyes and such hands, on a memorable occasion 
veiy lately ! 

He dismissed her, and she glided out of the room. But she 
remained before me, as plainly as if she were still there. I looked 
at those hands, I looked at those eyes, I looked at that flowing 
hair; and I compared them with other hands, other eyes, other 
hair, that I knew of, and with what those might be after twenty 
years of a brutal husband and a stormy life. I looked again at 
those hands and eyes of the housekeeper, and thought of the inex- 
plicable feeling that had come over me when I last walked — not 
alone — in the ruined garden, and through the deserted brewery. 
I thought how the same feeling had come back when I saw a face 
looking at me, and a hand waving to me from a stage-coach win- 
dow ; and how it had come back again and had flashed about me 
like lightning, when I had passed in a carriage — not alone — 
through a sudden glare of light in a dark street. I thought how 
one link of association had helped that identification in the theatre, 
and how such a link, wanting before, had been riveted for me now, 
when I had passed by a chance swift from Estella's name to the 
fingers mth their knitting action, and the attentive eyes. And I 
felt absolutely certain that this woman was Estella's mother. 

Mr. Jaggers had seen me with Estella, and was not likely to 
have missed the sentiments I had been at no pains to conceal. He 
nodded when I said the subject was painful to me, clapped me 
on the back, put round the wine again, and went on with his 
dinner. 

Only twice more did the housekeeper reappear, and then her 
stay in the room was very short, and Mr. Jaggers was sharp with 
her. But her hands were Estella's hands, and her eyes were 
Estella's eyes, and if she had reappeared a hundred times I could 
have been neither more sure nor less sure that my conviction was 
the truth. 

It was a dull evening, for Wemmick drew his wine when it came 
round, quite as a matter of business — just as he might have 
drawn his salary when that came round — and with his eyes on 
his chief, sat in a state of perpetual readiness for cross-examination. 
As to the quantity of ^vine, his post-oflBce was as indifierent and 
ready as any other post-office for its quantity of letters. From my 
point of view, he was the wrong twin all the time, and only 
externally like the Wemmick of Walworth. 

We took our leave early, and left together. Even when we were 
groping among Mr. Jaggers's stock of boots for our hats, I felt that 
the right twin was on his way back ; and we had not gone half a 
dozen yards down Gerrard-street in the Walworth direction before 



336 GREAT EXTECTATIONS. 

I found that I was walking aim-iu-arm with the right twin, and 
that the wrong twin had evaporated into the evening air. 

" Well ! " said Wemmick, " that's over ! He's a wonderful man, 
without his living likeness ; but I feel that I have to screw mj^self 
up when I dine with him — and I dine more comfortably un- 
screwed." 

I felt that this was a good statement of the case, and told him so. 

"Wouldn't say it to anybody but yourself," he answered. " I 
know that what is said between you and me, goes no further." 

I asked him if he had ever seen Miss Havisham's adopted 
daughter, Mrs. Bentley Drummle ? He said no. To avoid being 
too abrupt, I then spoke of the Aged, and of Miss Skiffins. He 
looked rather sly when I mentioned Miss Skiffins, and stopped in 
the street to blow his nose, with a roll of the head and a flourish 
not quite free from latent boastfulness. 

"Wemmick," said I, "do you remember telling me, before I first 
went to Mr. Jaggers's private house, to notice that housekeeper 1 " 

" Did I ? " he replied. " Ah, I dare say I did. Deuce take me," 
he added sullenly, " I know I did. I find I am not quite unscrewed 

yet." 

" A wild beast tamed, you called her ? " 

" And what did you call her ? " 

" The same. How did Mr. Jaggers tame her, Wemmick ? " 

" That's his secret. She has been with him many a long year." 

" I wish you would tell me her story. I feel a particular inter- 
est in being acquainted with it. You know that w^hat is said 
between you and me goes no further." 

"Well ! " Wemmick replied, "I don't know her story — that is, 
I don't know all of it. But what I do know, I'll tell you. We 
are in our private and personal capacities, of course." 

" Of course." 

"A score or so of years ago, that woman was tried at the Old 
Bailey for murder and was acquitted. She was a very handsome 
young woman, and I believe had some gipsy blood in her. Any- 
how, it was hot enough when it was up, as you may suppose." 

" But she was acquitted." 

" Mr. Jaggers was for her," pursued Wemmick, with a look full 
of meaning, " and worked the case in a way quite astonishing. It 
was a desperate case, and it was comparatively early days with him 
then, and he worked it to general admiration ; in fact, it may almost 
be said to have made him. He worked it himself at the police- 
office, day after day for many days, contending against even a 
committal ; and at the trial where he couldn't work it himself, sat 
under counsel, and — every one knew — put in all the salt and 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 337 

pepper. The murdered person was a womau ; a woman, a good 
ten years older, very much larger, and very much stronger. It 
was a case of jealousy. They both led tramping lives, and this 
woman in Gerrard-street here, had been married very young, over 
the broomstick (as we say), to a tramping man, and was a perfect 
fury in point of jealousy. The murdered woman — more a match 
for the man, certainly, in point of years — was found dead in a barn 
near Hounslow Heath. There had been a violent struggle, per- 
haps a fight. She was bruised and scratched and torn, and had 
been held by the throat at last and choked. Now, there was no 
reasonable evidence to implicate any person but this woman, and, 
on the improbabilities of her having been able to do it, Mr. Jaggers 
principally rested his case. You may be sure," said Wemmick, 
touching me on the sleeve, " that he never dwelt upon the strength 
of her hands then, though he sometimes does now." 

I had told Wemmick of his showing us her wrists, that day of 
the dinner party. 

"Well, sir!" Wemmick went on; "it happened — happened, 
don't you see? — that this woman was so very artfully dressed 
from the time of her apprehension, that she looked much slighter 
than she really was ; in particular, her sleeves are always remem- 
bered to have been so skilfully contrived that her arms had quite a 
delicate look. She had only a braise or two about her — nothing 
for a tramp — but the backs of her hands were lacerated, and the 
question was, was it with finger-nails ? Now, Mr. Jaggers showed 
that she had struggled through a great lot of brambles which were 
not as high as her face ; but which she could not have got through 
and kept her hands out of; and bits of those brambles were 
actually found in her skin and put in evidence, as well as the 
fact that the brambles in question were found on examination to 
have been broken through, and to have little shreds of her dress 
and little spots of blood upon them here and there. But the 
boldest point he made, was this. It was attempted to be set up 
in proof of her jealousy, that she was under strong suspicion of 
having, at about the time of the murder, frantically destroyed her 
child by this man — some three years old — to revenge herself 
upon him. Mr. Jaggers worked that, in this way. ' We say 
these are not marks of finger-nails, but marks of brambles, and we 
show you the brambles. You say they are marks of finger-nails, 
and you set up the hypothesis that she destroyed her child. You 
must accept all consequences of that hypothesis. For anything 
we know, she may have destroyed her child, and the child in 
clinging to her may have scratched her hands. What then? 
You are not trying her for the murder of her child ; why don't 



338 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

you 1 As to this case, if you ivill have scratches, we say that, for 
anything we know, you may have accounted for them, assuming 
for the sake of argument that you have not invented them 1 ' To 
sum up, sir," said Wemmick, "Mr. Jaggers was altogether too 
many for the Jury, and they gave in." 

" Has she been in his service ever since ? " 

"Yes; but not only that," said Wemmick, "she went into his 
service immediately after her acquittal, tamed as she is now. She 
has since been taught one thing and another in the way of her 
duties, but she was tamed from the beginning." 

" Do you remember the sex of the child 1 " 

" Said to have been a girl." 

"You have nothing more to say to me to-night?" 

" Nothing. I got your letter and destroyed it. Nothing." 

We exchanged a cordial Good Night, and I went home, with 
new matter for my thoughts, though with no relief from the old. 



CHAPTER XLIX. 

Putting Miss Havisham's note in my pocket, that it might 
serve as my credentials for so soon reappearing at Satis House, in 
case her waywardness should lead her to express any surprise at 
seeing me, I went down again by the coach next day. But, I 
alighted at the Halfway House, and breakfasted there, and walked 
the rest of the distance ; for, I sought to get into the town quietly 
by the unfrequented ways, and to leave it in the same manner. 

The best light of the day was gone when I passed along the 
quiet echoing courts behind the High-street. The nooks of ruin 
where the old monks had once had their refectories and gardens, 
and where the strong walls were now pressed into the service of 
humble sheds and stables, were almost as silent as the old monks 
in their graves. The cathedral chimes had at once a sadder and 
a more remote sound to me, as I hurried on avoiding observation, 
than they had ever had before ; so, the swell of the old organ was 
borne to my ears like funeral music; and the rooks, as they 
hovered about the grey tower and swung in the bare high trees 
of the priory-garden, seemed to call to me that the place was 
changed, and that Estella was gone out of it for ever. 

An elderly woman whom I had seen before as one of the ser- 
vants who lived in the supplementary house across the back court- 
yard, opened the gate. The lighted candle stood in the dark 
passage within, as of old, and I took it up and ascended the 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 339 

staircase alone. Miss Havisham was not in her own room, but 
was in the larger room across the landing. Looking in at the 
door, after knocking in vain, I saw her sitting on the hearth in a 
ragged chair, close before, and lost in the contemplation of, the 
ashy fire. 

Doing as I had often done, I went in, and stood, touching the 
old chimney-piece, where she could see me when she raised her 
eyes. There was an air of utter loneliness upon her, that would 
have moved me to pity though she had wilfully done me a deeper 
injury than I could charge her with. As I stood compassionating 
her, and thinking how in the progress of time I too had come to 
be a part of the wrecked fortunes of that house, her eyes rested 
on me. She stared, and said in a low voice, "Is it real?" 

"It is I, Pip. Mr. Jaggers gave me your note yesterday, and 
I have lost no time." 

" Thank you. Thank you." 

As I brought another of the ragged chairs to the hearth and 
sat down, I remarked a new expression on her face, as if she were 
afraid. of me. 

"I want," she said, "to pursue that subject you mentioned to 
me when you were last here, and to show you that I am not all 
stone. But perhaps you can never believe, now, that there is 
anything human in my heart ? " 

When I said some reassuring words, she stretched out her 
tremulous right hand, as though she was going to touch me; but 
she recalled it again before I understood the action, or knew how 
to receive it. 

"You said, speaking for your friend, that you could tell me 
how to do something useful and good. Something that you would 
like clone, is it not?" 

" Something that I would like done very, very much." 

"What is it?" 

I began explaining to her that secret history of the partnership. 
I had not got far into it, when I judged from her looks that she 
was thinking in a discursive way of me, rather than of what I 
said. It seemed to be so, for, when I stopped speaking, many 
moments passed before she showed that she was conscious of the 
fact. 

"Do you break off"," she asked then, with her former air of being 
afraid of me, " because you hate me too much to bear to speak to 
me?" 

"No, no," I answered, "how can you think so. Miss Havisham ! 
I stopped because I thought you were not following what I said." 

"Perhaps I was not," she answered, putting a hand to her head. 



340 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

"Begin again, and let me look at something else. Stay! Now 
tell me." 

She set her hand upon her stick, in the resolute way that some- 
times was habitual to her, and looked at the fire with a strong 
expression of forcing herself to attend. I went on with my expla- 
nation, and told her how I had hoped to complete the transaction 
out of my means, but how in this I was disappointed. That part 
of the subject (I reminded her) involved matters which could form 
no part of my explanation, for they were the weighty secrets of 
another. 

" So ! " said she, assenting with her head, but not looking at me. 
" And how much money is wanting to complete the purchase 1 " 

I was rather afraid of stating it, for it sounded a large sum. 
" Nine hundred pounds." 

" If I give you the money for this purpose, will you keep my 
secret as you have kept your own ? " 

" Quite as faithfuUy.'' 

" And your mind will be more at rest ? " 

" Much more at rest." 

" Are you very unhappy now ? " 

She asked this question, still without looking at me, but in an 
unwonted tone of sympathy. I could not reply at the moment for 
my voice failed me. She put her left arm across the head of her 
stick, and softly laid her forehead on it. 

" I am far from happy. Miss Havisham ; but I have other causes 
of disquiet than any you know of. They are the secrets I have 
mentioned." 

After a little while, she raised her head, and looked at the fire 
again. 

" 'Tis noble in you to tell me that you have other causes of 
unhappiness. Is it true ? " 

" Too true." 

" Can I only serve you, Pip, by serving your friend ? Regarding 
that as done, is there nothing I can do for you yourself?" 

" Nothing. I thank you for the question. I thank you even 
more for the tone of the question. But, there is nothing." 

She presently rose from her seat, and looked about the blighted 
room for the means of writing. There were none there, and she 
took from her pocket a yellow set of ivory tablets, mounted in tar- 
nished gold, and wrote upon them with a pencil in a case of tarnished 
gold that hung from her neck. 

" You are still on friendly terms with Mr. Jaggers ? " 

" Quite. I dined with him yesterday." 

" This is an authority to him to pay you that money, to lay out 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 341 

at your irresponsible discretion for your friend. I keep no money 
here ; but if you would rather Mr. Jaggers knew nothing of the 
matter, I vnll send it to you.'' 

"Thank you, Miss Havisham; I have not the least objection to 
receiving it from him." 

She read me what she had wTitten, ami it was direct and clear, 
and evidently intended to absolve me from any suspicion of profit- 
ing by the receipt of the money. I took the tablets from her hand, 
and it trembled again, and it trembled more as she took off the 
chain to which the pencil was attached, and put it in mine. All 
this she did, mthout looking at me. 

" My name is on the first leaf If you can ever write under my 
name, ' I forgive her,' though ever so long after my broken heart is 
dust — pray do it ! " 

" Miss Havisham," said I, " I can do it now. There have been 
sore mistakes ; and my life has been a Wind and thankless one ; 
and I want forgiveness and direction far too much, to be bitter with 
you." 

She turned her face to me for the first time since she had 
averted it, and to my amazement, I may even add to my terror, 
dropped on her knees at my feet ; with her folded hands raised to 
me in the manner in which, when her poor heart was young and 
fresh and whole, they must often have been raised to Heaven from 
her mother's side. 

To see her with her white hair and her worn face, kneeling at 
my feet, gave me a shock through all my frame. I entreated her to 
rise, and got my arms about her to help her up ; but she only 
pressed that hand of mine which was nearest to her grasp, and 
hung her head over it and wept. I had never seen her shed a tear 
before, and in the hope that the relief might do her good, I bent 
over her without speaking. She was not kneeling now, but was 
down upon the ground. 

" ! " she cried, despairingly. " What have I done ! What have 
I done ! " 

" If you mean, Miss Havisham, what have you done to injure 
me, let me answer. Veiy little. I should have loved her under 
any circumstances. — Is she married 1 " 

"Yes!" 

It was a needless question, for a new desolation in the' desolate 
house had told me so. 

" What have I done ! What have I done ! " She wi'ung her 
hands, and crushed her Avhite hair, and returned to this cry over 
and over again. " What have I done ! " 

I knew not how to answer, or how to comfort her. That she 



342 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

had clone a grievous thing in taking an impressionable child to 
mould into the form that her wild resentment, spurned aflfection, 
and wounded pride, found vengeance in, I knew full well. But 
that, in shutting out the light of day, she had shut out infinitely- 
more ; that, in seclusion she had secluded herself from a thousand 
natural and healing influences ; that, her mind, brooding solitary, 
had grown diseased, as all minds do and must and will that reverse 
the appointed order of their Maker ; I knew equally well. And 
could I look upon her without compassion, seeing her punishment 
in the ruin she was, in her profound unfitness for this earth on which 
she was placed, in the vanity of sorrow which had become a master 
mania, like the vanity of penitence, the vanity of remorse, the vanity 
of unworthiness, and other monstrous vanities that have been curses 
in this world 1 

" Until you spoke to her the other day, and until I saw in you a 
looking-glass that showed me what I once felt myself, I did not 
know what I had done. What have I done ! What have I done ! " 
And so again, twenty, fifty times over, What had she done ! 

"Miss Havisham," I said, when her cry had died away, "you 
may dismiss me from your mind and conscience. But Estella is a 
different case, and if you can ever undo any scrap of what you have 
done amiss in keeping a part of her right nature away from her, 
it will be better to do that, than to bemoan the past through a 
hundred years." 

"Yes, yes, I know it. But, Pip — my Dear ! " There was an 
earnest womanly compassion for me in her new affection. " My 
dear ! Believe this : when she first came to me, I meant to save 
her from misery like my own. At first I meant no more." 

" Well, well ! " said I. " I hope so." 

"But as she grew, and promised to be very beautiful, I gradually 
did worse, and with my praises, and with my jew^els, and with my 
teachings, and with this figui'e of myself always before her, a warn- 
ing to back and point my lessons, I stole her heart away and put 
ice in its place." 

" Better," I could not help saying, " to have left her a natural 
heart, even to be bruised or broken." 

With that. Miss Ha\dsham looked distractedly at me for a while, 
and then burst out again. What had she done ! 

"If you knew all my stoiy," she pleaded, "you would have 
some compassion for me and a better understanding of me." 

"Miss Havisham," I answered, as delicately as I could, "I 
believe I may say that I do know your story, and have known it 
ever since I first left this neighbourhood. It has inspired me with 
great commiseration, and I hope I understand it and its influences. 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 343 

Does what has passed between us give me any excuse for asking 
you a question relative to Estella 1 Not as she is, but as she was 
when she first came here 1 " 

She was seated on the ground, with her arms on the ragged 
chair, and her head leaning on them. She looked full at me when 
I said this, and replied, "Go on." 

" Whose child was Estella 1 " 

She shook her head. 

" You don't know ? " 

She shook her head again. 

"But Mr. Jaggers brought her here, or sent her here?" 

" Brought her here." 

"Will you tell me how that came about?" 

She answered in a low whisper and with caution : "I had been 
shut up in these rooms a long time (I don't know how long ; you 
know what time the clocks keep here), when I told him that I 
wanted a little girl to rear and love, and save from my fate. I 
had first seen him when I sent for him to lay this place waste for 
me ; having read of him in the newspapers before I and the world 
parted. He told me that he would look about him for such an 
orphan child. One night he brought her here asleep, and I called 
her Estella." 

" Might I ask her age then ? " 

"Two or three. She herself knows nothing, but that she was 
left an orphan and I adopted her." 

So convinced I was of that woman's being her mother, that I 
wanted no evidence to establish the fact in my mind. But, to any 
mind, I thought, the connection here was clear and straight. 

What more could I hope to do by prolonging the interview ? I 
had succeeded on behalf of Herbert, Miss Havisham had told me 
all she knew of Estella, I had said and done what I could to ease 
her mind. No matter with what other words we parted ; we 
parted. 

Twilight was closing in when I went downstairs into the nat- 
ural air. I called to the woman who had opened the gate when I 
entered, that I would not trouble her just yet, but would walk 
round the place before leaving. For, I had a presentiment that I 
should never be there again, and I felt that the dying light was 
suited to my last view of it. 

By the wilderness of casks that I had walked on long ago, and 
on which the rain of years had fallen since, rotting them in many 
places, .and leaving miniature swamps and pools of water upon 
those that stood on end, I made my way to the ruined garden. I 
went all round it ; round by the corner where Herbert and I had 



344 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

fought our battle; round by the paths where Estella and I had 
walked. So cold, so lonely, so dreary all ! 

Taking the brewery on my way back, I raised the rusty latch of 
a little door at the garden end of it, and walked through. I was 
going out at the opposite door — not easy to open now, for the 
damp wood had started and swelled, and the hinges were yielding, 
and the threshold was encumbered with a growth of fungus — 
when I turned my head to look back. A childish association 
revived with wonderful force in the moment of the slight action, 
and I fancied that I saw Miss Havisham hanging to the beam. 
So strong was the impression, that I stood under the beam shud- 
dering from head to foot before I knew it was a fancy — though to 
be sure I was there in an instant. 

The mournfulness of the place and time, and the great terror of 
this illusion, though it was but momentary, caused me to feel an 
indescribable awe as I came out between the open wooden gates 
where I had once wrung my hair after Estella had wrung my heart. 
Passing on into the front courtyard, I hesitated whether to call 
the woman to let me out at the locked gate, of which she had the 
key, or first to go upstairs and assure myself that Miss Havisham 
was as safe and well as I had left her. I took the latter course 
and went up. 

I looked into the room where I had left her, and I saw her 
seated in the ragged chair upon the hearth close to the fii'e, with 
her back towards me. In the moment when I was withdrawing 
my head to go quietly away, I saw a great flaming light spring up. 
In the same moment I saw her running at me, shrieking, with a 
whirl of fire blazing all about her, and soaring at least as many 
feet above her head as she was high. 

I had a double-caped great-coat on, and over my arm another 
thick coat. That I got them ofi", closed with her, threw her down, 
and got them over her ; that I dragged the great cloth from the 
table for the same purpose, and with it dragged down the heap of 
rottenness in the midst, and all the ugly things that sheltered 
there ; that we were on the ground struggling like desperate ene- 
mies, and that the closer I covered her, the more wildly she 
shrieked and tried to free herself; that this occurred I knew 
through the result, but not through anything I felt, or thought, or 
knew I did. I knew nothing until I knew that we were on the 
floor by the great table, and that patches of tinder yet alight were 
floating in the smoky air, which a moment ago had been her faded 
bridal dress. 

Then, I looked round and saw the disturbed beetles and spiders 
running away over the floor, and the servants coming in with 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 345 

breathless cries at the door. I still held her forcibly down with 
all my strength, like a prisoner who might escape ; and I doubt if 
I even knew who she was, or why we had struggled, or that she 
-had been in flames, or that the flames were out, until I saw the 
patches of tinder that had been her garments, no longer alight, but 
falling in a black shower around us. 

She was insensible, and I was afraid to have her moved, or even 
touched. Assistance was sent for, and I held her until it came, as 
if I unreasonably fancied (I think I did) that if I let her go, the 
fire would break out again and consume her. When I got up, on 
the surgeon's coming to her with other aid, I was astonished to see 
that both my hands were burnt; for, I had no knowledge of it 
through the sense of feeling. 

On examination it was pronounced that she had received serious 
hurts, but that they of themselves were far from hopeless; the 
danger lay mainly in the nervous shock. By the surgeon's direc- 
tions, her bed was carried into that room and laid upon the great 
table : which happened to be well suited to the dressing of her 
injuries. When I saw her again, an hour afterwards, she lay 
indeed where I had seen her strike her stick, and had heard her say 
she would lie one day. 

Though every vestige of her dress was burnt, as they told me, 
she still had something of her old ghastly bridal appearance ; for, 
they had covered her to the throat with white cotton-wool, and as 
she lay with a white sheet loosely overlying that, the phantom air 
of something that had been and was changed Avas still upon her. 

I found, on questioning the servants, that Estella was in Paris, 
and I got a promise from the surgeon that he would write by the 
next post. Miss Havisham's family I took upon myself; intend- 
ing to communicate with Matthew Pocket only, and leave him 
to do as he liked about informing the rest. This I did next day, 
through Herbert, as soon as I returned to town. 

There was a stage, that evening, when she spoke collectedly of 
what had happened, though with a certain terrible vivacity. Tow- 
ards midnight she began to wander in her speech, and after that 
it gradually set in that she said innumerable times in a low solemn 
voice, "What have I done!" And then, "When she first came, 
I meant to save her from misery like mine." And then, " Take 
the pencil and write under my name, ' I forgive her ! ' " She never 
changed the order of these three sentences, but she sometimes left 
out a word in one or other of them ; never putting in another word, 
but always leaving a blank and going on to the next word. 

As I could do no service there, and as I had, nearer home, that 
pressing reason for anxiety and fear which even her wanderings 



346 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

could not drive out of my mind, I decided in the course of the 
night that I would return by the early morning coach : walking 
on a mile or so, and being taken up clear of the town. At about 
six o'clock of the morning, therefore, I leaned over her and touched 
her lips \\ith mine, just as they said, not stopping for being touched, 
" Take the pencil and write under my name, ' I forgive her.' " 



CHAPTER L. 

My hands had been dressed twice or thrice in the night, and 
again in the morning. My left arm was a good deal burned to 
the elbow, and, less severely, as high as the shoulder ; it was very 
painful, but the flames had set in that direction, and I felt thank- 
ful it was no worse. My right hand was not so badly burnt but 
that I could move the fingers. It was bandaged, of course, but 
much less inconveniently than my left hand and arm ; those I car- 
ried in a sling ; and I could only wear my coat like a cloak, loose 
over my shoulders and fastened at the neck. My hair had been 
caught by the fire, but not my head or face. 

When Herbert had been down to Hammersmith and had seen 
his father, he came back to me at our chambers, and devoted the 
day to attending on me. He was the kindest of nurses, and at 
stated times took off the bandages, and steeped them in the cool- 
ing liquid that was kept ready, and put them on again, with a 
patient tenderness that I was deeply grateful for. 

At first, as I lay quiet on the sofa, I found it painfully difficult, 
I might say impossible, to get rid of the impression of the glare of 
the flames, their hurry and noise, and the fierce burning smell. If 
I dozed for a minute, I was awakened by Miss Havisham's cries, 
and by her running at me with all that height of fire above her 
head. This pain of the mind was much harder to strive against 
than any bodily pain I suffered ; and Herbert, seeing that, did his 
utmost to hold my attention engaged. 

Neither of us spoke of the boat, but we both thought of it. 
That was made apparent by our avoidance of the subject, and by 
our agreeing — without agreement — to make my recovery of the 
use of my hands, a question of so many hours, not of so many 
weeks. 

My first question when I saw Herbert had been, of course, 
whether all was well down the river ? As he replied in the affirm- 
ative, with perfect confidence and cheerfulness, we did not resume 
the subject until the day was wearing away. But then, as Herbert 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 347 

changed the bandages, more by the light of the fire than by the 
outer hght, he went back to it spontaneously. 

"I sat with Pro vis last night, Handel, two good hours." 

"Where was Clara?" 

"Dear little thing!" said Herbert. "She was up and down 
with Gruffandgrim all the evening. He was perpetually pegging 
at the floor, the moment she left his sight. I doubt if he can hold 
out long though. What with rum and pepper — and pepper and 
rum — I should think his pegging must be nearly over." 

" And then you will be married, Herbert ? " 

" How can I take care of the dear child otherwise? — Lay your 
arm out upon the back of the sofa, my dear boy, and I'll sit down 
here, and get the bandage off so gradually that you shall not know 
when it comes. I was speaking of Provis. Do you know, Handel, 
he improves ? " 

"I said to you I thought he was softened when I last saw 
him." 

" So you did. And so he is. He was veiy communicative last 
night, and told me more of his life. You remember his breaking 
off here about some woman that he had had great trouble with. — 
Did I hurt you?" 

I had started, but not under his touch. His words had given 
me a start. 

"I had forgotten that, Herbert, but I remember it now you 
speak of it." 

" Well ! He Avent into that part of his life, and a dark wild 
part it is. Shall I tell you ? Or would it worry you just now ? " 

" Tell me by all means. Every word." 

Herbert bent forward to look at me more nearly, as if my reply 
had been rather more hurried or more eager than he could quite 
account for. " Your head is cool ? " he said, touching it. 

" Quite," said I. " Tell me what Provis said, my dear Herbert." 

" It seems," said Herbert, " — there's a bandage off most charm- 
ingly, and now comes the cool one — makes you shrink at first, my 
poor dear fellow, don't it ? but it will be comfortable presently — 
it seems that the Avoman was a young woman, and a jealous woman, 
and a revengeful woman ; revengeful, Handel, to the last degree." 

" To what last degree ? " 

" Murder. — Does it strike too cold on that sensitive place ? " 

"I don't feel it. Hoav did she murder? Whom did she 
murder ? " 

"Why, the deed may not have merited quite so terrible a name," 
said Herbert, " but she was tried for it, and Mr. Jaggers defended 
her, and the reputation of that defence first made his name known 



us GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

to Provis. It was another and a stronger woman who was the 
victim, and there had been a struggle — in a barn. Who began it, 
or how fair it was, or how unfair, may be doubtful ; but how it 
ended is certainly not doubtful, for the victim was found throttled.'' 

" Was the wonian brought in guilty ? " 

" No ; she was acquitted. — My poor Handel, I hurt you ! " 

" It is impossible to be gentler, Herbert. Yes ? What else ? " 

" This acquitted young woman and Provis had a little child : a 
little child of whom Provis was exceedingly fond. On the evening 
of the very night when the object of her jealousy was strangled as 
I tell you, the young woman presented herself before Provis for 
one moment, and swore that she would destroy tlie child (which 
was in her possession), and he should never see it again ; then, she 
vanished. — There's the worst arm comfortably in the shng once 
more, and now there remains but the right hand, which is a far 
easier job. I can do it better by this light than by a stronger, for 
my hand is steadiest when I don't see the poor bhstered patches 
too distinctly. — You don't think your breathing is affected, my 
dear boy? You seem to breathe quickly." 

"Perhaps I do, Herbert. Did the woman keep her oath?" 

" There comes the darkest part of Pro\is's life. She did." 

" That is, he says she did." 

"Why, of course, my dear boy," returned Herbert, in a tone of 
surprise, and again bending forward to get a nearer look at me. 
" He says it all. I have no other information." 

"No, to be sure." 

"Now, whether," pursued Herbert, "he had used the child's 
mother ill, or whether he had used the child's mother well, Provis 
doesn't say; but, she had shared some four or five years of the 
wretched Ufe he described to us at this fireside, and he seems to have 
felt pity for her, and forbearance towards her. Therefore, fearing 
he should be called upon to depose about this destroyed child, and so 
be the cause of her death, he hid himself (much as he giieved for 
the child), kept himself dark, as he says, out of the way and out 
of the trial, and was only vaguely talked of as a certain man called 
Abel, out of whom the jealousy arose. After the acquittal she 
disappeared, and thus he lost the child and the child's mother." 

"I want to ask — " 

" A moment, my dear boy, and I have done. That evil genius, 
Compeyson, the worst of scoundrels among many scoundrels, know- 
ing of his keeping out of the way at that time, and of his reasons for 
doing so, of course afterwards held the knowledge over his head as 
a means of keeping him poorer, and working him harder. It was 
clear last night that this barbed the point of Provis's animosity." 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 34'J 

" I want to know," said I, " and particularly, Herbert, whether 
he told you when this happened ? " 

" Particularly ? Let me remember, then, what he said as to 
that. His expression was, ' a round score o' year ago, and a'most 
directly after I took up wi' Compeyson.' How old were you when 
you came upon him in the little churchyard ? " 

" I think in my seventh year." 

"Ay. It had happened some three or four years then, he said, 
and you brought into his mind the little girl so tragically lost, who 
would have been about your age." 

"Herbert," said I, after a short silence, in a hurried way, "can 
you see me best by the light of the window, or the light of the fire ? " 

"By the firelight," answered Herbert, coming close again. 

"Look at me." 

" I do look at you, my dear boy." 

" Touch me." 

" I do touch you, my dear boy." 

" You are not afraid that I am in any fever, or that my head is 
much disordered by the accident of last night ? " 

" N-no, my dear boy," said Herbert, after taking time to examine 
me. "You are rather excited, but you are quite yourself." 

" I know I am quite myself. And the man we have in hiding 
down the river, is Estella's Father." 



CHAPTER LI. 

What purpose I had in view when I was hot on tracing out 
and proving Estella's parentage, I cannot say. It will presently be 
seen that the question was not before me in distinct shape, until it 
was put before me by a wiser head than my own. 

But, when Herbert and I had held our momentous conversation, 
I was seized with a feverish conviction that I ought to hunt the 
matter down — that I ought not to let it rest, but tliat I ought to 
see Mr. Jaggers, and come at the bare truth. I really do not 
know whether I felt that I did this for Estella's sake, or whether I 
was glad to transfer to the man in Avhose preservation I was so 
much concerned, some rays of the romantic interest that had so long 
surrounded me. Perhaps the latter possibility may be the nearer 
to the truth. 

Anyway, I could scarcely be withheld from going out to Ger- 
rard-street that night. Herbert's representations, that if I did, 
I should probably be laid up and stricken useless, when our 



350 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

fugitive's safety would depend upon me, alone restrained my 
impatience. On the understanding, again and again reiterated, that 
come what would, I was to go to Mr. Jaggers to-morrow, I at 
length submitted to keep quiet, and to have my hurts looked after, 
and to stay at home. Early next morning we went out together, 
and at the corner of Giltspur-street by Smithfield, I left Her- 
bert to go his w^ay into the city, and took my way to Little 
Britain. 

There were periodical occasions when Mr. Jaggers and Mr. 
Wemmick went over the office accounts, and checked oJQF the 
vouchers, and put all things straight. On these occasions Wemmick 
took his books and papers into Mr. Jaggers's room, and one of the 
upstaii's clerks came down into the outer office. Finding such clerk 
on Wemmick's post that morning, I knew what was going on; but 
I was not sorry to have Mr. Jaggers and Wemmick together, as 
Wemmick would then hear for himself that I said nothing to 
compromise him. 

My appearance with my arm bandaged and my coat loose over 
my shoulders, favoured my object. Although I had sent Mr, 
Jaggers a brief account of the accident as soon as I had arrived in 
town, yet I had to give him all the details now; and the specialty 
of the occasion caused our talk to be less dry and hard, and less 
strictly regulated by the rules of evidence, than it had been before. 
While I described the disaster, Mr, Jaggers stood, according to his 
wont, before the fire, Wemmick leaned back in his chair, staring 
at me, with his hands in the pockets of his trousers, and his pen 
put horizontally into the post. The two brutal casts, always 
inseparable in my mind from official proceedings, seemed to be 
congestively considering whether they didn't smell fire at the 
present moment. 

My narrative finished, and their questions exhausted, I then 
produced Miss Havisham's authority to receive the nine hundred 
pounds for Herbert, Mr, Jaggers's eyes retired a little deeper into 
his head when I handed him the tablets, but he presently handed 
them over to Wemmick, with instructions to draw the cheque 
for his signature. While that was in course of being done, I looked 
on at Wemmick as he wrote, and Mr, Jaggers, poising and swaying 
himself on his well-polished boots, looked on at me, " I am sorry, 
Pip," said he, as I put the cheque in my pocket, when he had 
signed it, "that we do nothing for yow." 

"Miss Havisham v/as good enough to ask me," I returned, 
"whether she could do nothing for me, and I told her No." 

" Everybody should know his own business," said Mr, Jaggers, 
And I saw Wemmick's lips form the word "portable property," 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 351 

" I should not have told her No, if I had been you," said Mr. 
Jaggfers ; "but every man ought to know his own business best." 

"Every man's business," said Wemmick, rather reproachfully 
towards me, " is ' portable property.' " 

As I thought the time was now come for pursuing the theme I 
had at heart, I said, turning on Mr. Jaggers : 

"I did ask something of Miss Havisham, however, sir. I asked 
her to give me some information relative to her adopted daughter, 
and she gave me all she possessed." 

" Did she ? " said Mr. Jaggers, bending forward to look at his 
boots and then straightening himself. " Hah ! I don't think I 
should have done so, if I had been Miss Havisham. But she 
ought to know her own business best." 

" I know more of the history of Miss Havisham's adopted child, 
than Miss Havisham herself does, sir. I know her mother." 

Mr. Jaggers looked at me inquiringly, and repeated, " Mother ? " 

"I have seen her mother within these three days." 

"Yes?" said Mr. Jaggers. 

"And so have you, sir. And you have seen her still more 
recently." 

" Yes ? " said Mr. Jaggers. 

"Perhaps I know more of Estella's history, than even you do," 
said I. "I know her father, too." 

A certain stop that Mr. Jaggers came to in his manner — he 
was too self-possessed to change his manner, but he could not help 
its being brought to an indefinably attentive stop — assured me 
that he did not know who her father was. This I had strongly 
suspected from Provis's account (as Herbert had repeated it) of his 
having kept himself dark ; which I pieced on to the fact that he 
himself was not Mr. Jaggers's client until some four years later, and 
when he could have no reason for claiming his identity. But, I 
could not be sure of this unconsciousness on Mr. Jaggers's part 
before, though I was quite sure of it now. 

" So ! You know the young lady's father, Pip ? " said Mr. Jaggers, 

"Yes," I replied, "and his name is Provis — from New South 
Wales." 

Even Mr. Jaggers started when I said those words. It was the 
slightest start that could escape a man, the most carefully repressed 
and the sooner checked, but he did start, though he made it a part 
of the action of taking out his pocket-handkerchief. How Wem- 
mick received the announcement I am unable to say, for I was 
afraid to look at him just then, lest Mr. Jaggers's sharpness should 
detect that there had been some communication unknown to him 
between us. 



352 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

"And on what evidence, Pip," asked Mr. Jaggers, very coolly, 
as he paused with his handkerchief half way to his nose, "does 
Provis make this claim 1 " 

" He does not make it," said I, " and has never made it, and has 
no knowledge" or belief that his daughter is in existence." 

For once, the powerful pocket-handkerchief failed. My reply 
was so unexpected that Mr. Jaggers put the handkerchief back 
into his pocket without completing the usual performance, folded 
his arms, and looked with stern attention at me, though with an 
immovable face. 

Then I told him all I knew, and how I knew it ; with the one 
reservation that I left him to infer that I knew from Miss Havis- 
ham what I in fact knew from Wemmick. I was very careful 
indeed as to that. N"or, did I look towards Wemmick until I had 
finished all I had to tell, and had been for some time silently 
meeting Mr. Jaggers's look. When I did at last turn my eyes in 
Wemmick's direction, I found that he had unposted his pen, and 
was intent upon the table before him. 

" Hah ! " said Mr. Jaggers at last, as he moved towards the 
papers on the table. " — What item was it you were at, Wem- 
mick, when Mr. Pip came in 1 " 

But I could not submit to be thrown off in that way, and I 
made a passionate, almost an indignant appeal to him to be more 
frank and manly with me. I reminded him of the false hopes into 
which I had lapsed, the length of time they had lasted, and the 
discovery I had made : and I hinted at the danger that weighed 
upon my spirits. I represented myself as being surely worthy of 
some little confidence from him, in return for the confidence I had 
just now imparted. I said that I did not blame him, or suspect 
him, or mistrust him, but I wanted assurance of the truth from 
him. And if he asked me why I wanted it and why I thought I 
had any right to it, I would tell him, little as he cared for such 
poor dreams, that I had loved Estella dearly and long, and that, 
although I had lost her and must live a bereaved life, whatever 
concerned her was still nearer and dearer to me than anything else 
in the world. And seeing that Mr. Jaggers stood quite still and 
silent, and apparently quite obdurate, under this appeal, I turned 
to Wemmick, and said, " Wemmick, I know you to be a man with 
a gentle heart. I have seen your pleasant home, and your old 
father, and all the innocent cheerful playful ways with which you 
refresh your business life. And I entreat you to say a word for me 
to Mr. Jaggers, and to represent to him that, all circumstances 
considered, he ought to be more open with me ! " 

I have never seen two men look more oddly at one another than 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 353 

Mr. Jaggers and "Wemmick did after this apostrophe. At first, a 
misgiving crossed me that Wemmick would be instantly dismissed 
from his employment ; but, it melted as I saw Mr. Jaggers relax 
into something like a smile, and Wemmick become bolder. 

" What's all this ? " said Mr. Jaggers. " You with an old father, 
and you with pleasant and playful ways ? " 

" Well ! " returned Wemmick. " If I don't bring 'em here, what 
does it matter 1 " 

*'Pip," said Mr. Jaggers, laying his hand upon my arm, and 
smiling openly, " this man must be the most cunning impostor in 
all London." 

" Not a bit of it," returned Wemmick, growing bolder and bolder. 
" I think you're another." 

Again they exchanged their former odd looks, each apparently 
still distrustful that the other was taking him in. 

" Yoic with a pleasant home 1 " said Mr. Jaggers. 

" Since it don't interfere with business," returned Wemmick, " let 
it be so. Now, I look at you, sir, I shouldn't wonder if t/oic might 
be planning and contriving to have a pleasent home of your own, 
one of these days, when you're tired of all this work." 

Mr. Jaggers nodded his head retrospectively two or three times, 
and actually drew a sigh. "Pip," said he, "we w^on't talk about 
' poor dreams ; ' you know more about such things than I, having 
much fresher experience of that kind. But now, about this other 
matter. I'll put a case to you. Mind ! I admit nothing." 

He waited for me to declare that I quite understood that he 
expressly said that he admitted nothing. 

"Now, Pip," said Mr, Jaggers, "put this case. Put the case 
that a woman, under such circumstances as you have mentioned, 
held her child concealed, and was obhged to communicate the fact 
to her legal adviser, on his representing to her that he must know, 
with an eye to the latitude of his defence, how the fact stood about 
that child. Put the case that at the same time he held a trust to 
find a child for an eccentric rich lady to adopt and bring up." 

" I follow you, sir." 

" Put the case that he lived in an atmosphere of evil, and that 
all he saw of children was, their being generated in great numbers 
for certain destruction. Put the case that he often saw children 
solemnly tried at a criminal bar, where they were held up to be 
seen ; put the case that he habitually knew of their being impris- 
oned, whipped, transported, neglected, cast out, qualified in all 
ways for the hangman, and growing up to be hanged. Put the 
case that pretty nigh all the children he saw in his daily business 
life, he had reason to look upon as so much spawn, to develop into 



354 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

the fish that were to come to his net — to be prosecuted, defended, 
forsworn, made orphans, bedevilled somehow." 

" I follow you, sir." 

" Put the case, Pip, that here was one pretty little child out of 
the heap who could be saved ; whom the father believed dead, 
and dared make no stir about ; as to whom, over the mother, the 
legal adviser had this power : ' I know what you did, and how 
you did it. You came so and so, you did such and such things 
to divert suspicion. I have tracked you through it all, and I tell 
it you all. Part with the child, unless it should be necessarj^ to 
produce it to clear you, and then it shall be produced. Give the 
child into my hands, and I will do my best to bring you oflf. If 
you are saved, your child will be saved too ; if you are lost, your 
child is still saved.' Put the case that this was done, and that 
the woman was cleared." 

"I understand you perfectly." 

"But that I make no admissions?" 

"But that you make no admissions." And Wemmick repeated, 
"No admissions." 

" Put the case, Pip, that passion and the terror of death had a 
little shaken the woman's intellects, and that when she was set 
at liberty, she was scared out of the ways of the world and went 
to him to be sheltered. Put the case that he took her in, and 
that he kept down the old wild violent nature, whenever he saw 
an inkling of its breaking out, by asserting his power over her in 
the old way. Do you comprehend the imaginaiy case ? " 

"Quite." 

"Put the case that the child grew up, and was married for 
money. That the mother was still living. That the father was 
still living. That the mother and father, unknown to one another, 
were dwelling within so many miles, furlongs, yards if you like, of 
one another. That the secret was still a secret, except that you 
had got wind of it. Put that last case to yourself very carefully." 

" I do," 

" I ask Wemmick to put it to himseli very carefully." 

And Wemmick said, " I do." 

"For whose sake would you reveal the secret? For the 
father's? I think he would not be much the better for the 
mother. For the mother's ? I think if she had done such a deed 
she would be safer where she was. For the daughter's ? I think 
it would hardly serve her, to establish her parentage for the 
information of her husband, and to drag her back to disgrace, 
after an escape of twenty years, pretty secure to last for life. 
But, add the case that you had loved her, Pip, and had made her 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 355 

the subject of those ' poor dreams ' which have, at one time or 
another, been in the heads of more men than you think likely, 
then I tell you that you had better — and would much sooner 
when you had thought well of it — chop off that bandaged left 
hand of yours with your bandaged right hand, and then pass the 
chopper on to Wemmick there, to cut that off, too." 

I looked at Wemmick, whose face was very grave. He gravely 
touched his lips with his forefinger. I did the same. Mr. Jag- 
gers did the same. "Now, Wemmick," said the latter then, 
resuming his usual manner, "what item was it you were at, when 
Mr. Pip came in 1 " 

Standing by for a little, while they were at work, I observed 
that the odd looks they had cast at one another were repeated 
several times : with this difference now, that each of them seemed 
suspicious, not to say conscious, of having shown himself in a 
weak and unprofessional light to the other. For this reason, I 
suppose, they were now inflexible with one another ; Mr. Jaggers 
being highly dictatorial, and Wemmick obstinately justifying him- 
self . whenever there was the smallest point in abeyance for a 
moment. I had never seen them on such ill terms ; for generally 
they got on very well indeed together. 

But, they were both happily relieved by the opportune appear- 
ance of Mike, the client with the fur cap, and the habit of wiping 
his nose on his sleeve, whom I had seen on the very first day of 
my appearance within those walls. This individual, who, either 
in his own person on in that of some member of his family, seemed 
to be always in trouble (which in that place meant Newgate), 
called to announce that his eldest daughter was taken up on 
suspicion of shop-lifting. As he imparted this melancholy circum- 
stance to Wemmick, Mr. Jaggers standing; magisterially before the 
fire and taking no share in the proceedings, Mike's eye happened 
to twinkle with a tear. 

" What are you about 1 " demanded Wemmick, with the utmost 
indignation. "What do you come snivelling here for?" 

"I didn't go to do it, Mr. Wemmick." 

"You did," said Wemmick. "How dare you? You're not in 
a fit state to come here, if you can't come here without spluttering 
like a bad pen. What do you mean by it ? " 

"A man can't help his feelings, Mr. Wemmick," pleaded Mike. 

"His what?" demanded Wemmick, quite savagely. "Say 
that again ! " 

"Now look here, my man," said Mr. Jaggers, advancing a step, 
and pointing to the door. " Get out of this ofl&ce. I'll have no 
feelings here. Get out." 



356 GKEAT EXPECTATIONS. 

"It serves you right," said Wemmick. "Get out." 
So the unfortunate Mike very humbly withdrew, and Mr. 
Jaggers and "Wemmick appeared to have re-estabhshed their good 
understanding, and went to work again with an air of refreshment 
upon them as if they had just had lunch. 



CHAPTER LII. 

From Little Britain, I went, mth my cheque in my pocket, 
to Miss Skiffins's brother, the accountant ; and Miss Skiffins's 
brother, the accountant, going straight to Clarriker's and bringing 
Clarriker to me, I had the great satisfaction of concluding that 
arrangement. It was the only good thing I had done, and the 
only completed thing I had done, since I was first apprised of my 
great expectations. 

Clarriker informing me on that occasion that the affairs of the 
House were steadily progressing, that he would now be able to 
establish a small branch-house in the East which was much 
wanted for the extension of the business, and that Herbert in his 
new partnership capacity would go out and take charge of it, I 
found that I must have prepared for a separation from my friend, 
even though my own affairs had been more settled. And now 
indeed I felt as if my last anchor were loosening its hold, and I 
should soon be driving with the winds and waves. 

But, there was recompense in the joy with which Herbert 
would come home of a night and tell me of these changes, little 
imagining that he told me no news, and would sketch airy pictures 
of himself conducting Clara Barley to the land of the Arabian 
Nights, and of me going out to join them (with a caravan of 
camels, I believe), and of our all going up the Nile and seeing 
wonders. Without being sanguine as to my own part in those 
bright plans, I felt that Herbert's way was clearing fast, and that 
old Bill Barley had but to stick to his pepper and rum, and his 
daughter would soon be happily provided for. 

We had now got into the month of March. My left arm, 
though it presented no bad symptoms, took in the natural 
course so long to heal that I was still unable to get a coat on. 
My right arm was tolerably restored ; — disfigured, but fairly 
serviceable. 

On a Monday morning, when Herbert and I were at breakfast, 
I received the following letter from Wemmick by the post. 

" Walworth. Burn this as soon as read. Early in the week, or 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 367 

say Wednesday, you might do what you know of, if you felt disposed 
to try it. Now burn." 

When I had shown this to Herbert and had put it in the fire — 
but not before we had both got it by heart — we considered what 
to do. For, of course, my being disabled could now be no longer 
kept out of view. 

"I have thought it over, again and again," said Herbert, "and 
I think I know a better course than taking a Thames waterman. 
Take Startop. A good fellow, a skilled hand, fond of us, and 
enthusiastic and honourable." 

I had thought of him, more than once. 

" But how much would you tell him, Herbert ? " 

"It is necessary to tell him very little. Let him suppose it a 
mere freak, but a secret one, until the morning comes : then let 
him know that there is urgent reason for your getting Pro vis aboard 
and away. You go with him 1 " 

"No doubt." 

" Where 1 " 

It had seemed to me, in the many anxious considerations I had 
given the point, almost indifferent what port we made for — Ham- 
burg, Rotterdam, Antwerp — the place signified little, so that he 
was out of England. Any foreign steamer that fell in our way and 
would take us up would do. I had always proposed to myself to 
get him well down the river in the boat; certainly well beyond 
Gravesend, which was a critical place for search or inquiry if sus- 
picion were afoot. As foreign steamers would leave London at 
about the time of high-water, our plan would be to get down the 
river by a previous ebb-tide, and lie by in some quiet spot until we 
could pull off to one. The time when one would be due where we 
lay, wherever that might be, could be calculated pretty nearly, if 
we made inquiries beforehand. 

Herbert assented to all this, and we went out immediately after 
breakfast to pursue our investigations. We found that a steamer 
for Hamburg was likely to suit our purpose best, and we directed 
our thoughts chiefly to that vessel. But we noted down what 
other foreign steamers would leave London with the same tide, and 
we satisfied ourselves that we knew the build and colour of each. 
We then separated for a few hours ; I to get at once such passports 
as were necessary ; Herbert, to see Startop at his lodgings. We 
both did what we had to do without any hindrance, and when we 
met again at one o'clock reported it done. I, for my part, was 
prepared with passports; Herbert had seen Startop, and he was 
more than ready to join. 

Those two would pull a pair of oars, we settled, and I would 



358 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

steer : our charge would be sitter, and keep quiet ; as speed was 
not our object, we should make way enough. We arranged that 
Herbert should not come home to dinner before going to Mill Pond 
Bank that evening ; that he should not go there at all, to-morrow 
evening, Tuesday ; that he should prepare Pro vis to come down to 
some Stairs hard by the house, on Wednesday, when he saw us 
approach, and not sooner; that all the arrangements with him 
should be concluded that Monday night; and that he should be 
communicated with, no more in any way, until we took him on board. 

These precautions well understood by both of us, I went home. 

On opening the outer door of our chambers with my key, I 
found a letter in the box, directed to me ; a very dirty letter, though 
not ill-written. It had been dehvered by hand (of course since I 
left home), and its contents were these : 

" If you are not afraid to come to the old marshes to-night or 
to-morrow night at Nine, and to come to the little sluice-house by 
the lime-kiln, you had better come. If you want information re- 
garding ^02ir uncle Provis you had much better come and tell no 
one and lose no time. You must come alone. Bring this with 
you." 

I had had load enough upon my mind before the receipt of this 
strange letter. What to do now, I could not tell. And the worst 
was, that I must decide quickly, or I should miss the afternoon 
coach, which would take me down in time for to-night. To-morrow 
night I could not think of going, for it would be too close upon the 
time of the flight. And again, for anything I knew, the proffered 
information might have some important bearing on the flight itself. 

If I had had ample time for consideration, I believe I should 
still have gone. Having hardly any time for consideration — my 
watch showing me that the coach started within half an hour — I 
resolved to go. I should certainly not have gone, but for the refer- 
ence to my Uncle Provis. That, coming on Wemmick's letter and 
the morning's busy preparation, turned the scale. 

It is so difficult to become clearly possessed of the contents of 
almost any letter, in a violent hurry, that I had to read this mys- 
terious epistle again, twice, before its injunction to me to be secret 
got mechanically into my mind. Yielding to it in the same 
mechanical kind of way, I left a note in pencil for Herbert, telling 
him that as I should be so soon going away, I knew not for how 
long, I had decided to hurry down and back, to ascertain for myself 
how Miss Havisham was faring. I had then barely time to get my 
great-coat, lock up the chambers, and make for the coach-oftice by 
the short byeways. If I had taken a hackney-chariot and gone 
by the streets, I should have missed my aim ; going as I did, I 



360 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

caught the coach just as it came out of the yard. I was the only 
inside passenger, jolting away knee-deep in straw, when I came to 
myself. 

For, I really had not been myself since the receipt of the letter ; 
it had so bewildered me, ensuing on the hurry of the morning. 
The morning hurry and flutter had been great, for, long and 
anxiously as I had waited for Wemmick, his hint had come like a 
surprise at last. And now, I began to wonder at myself for being 
in the coach, and to doubt whether I had sufficient reason for being 
there, and to consider whether I should get out presently and go 
back, and to argue against ever heeding an anonymous communica- 
tion, and, in short, to pass through all those phases of contradic- 
tion and indecision to which I suppose very few hurried people are 
strangers. Still, the reference to Pro vis by name, mastered every- 
thing. I reasoned as I had reasoned already without knowing it — 
if that be reasoning — in case any harm should befall him through 
my not going, how could I ever forgive myself ! 

It was dark before we got down, and the journey seemed long 
and dreary to me who could see little of it inside, and who could 
not go outside in my disabled state. Avoiding the Blue Boar, I 
put up at an inn of minor reputation down the town, and ordered 
some dinner. While it was preparing, I went to Satis House and 
inquired for Miss Havisham ; she was still very ill, though con- 
sidered something better. 

My inn had once been a part of an ancient ecclesiastical house, 
and I dined in a little octagonal common-room, like a font. As 
I was not able to cut my dinner, the old landlord with a shining 
bald head did it for me. This bringing us into conversation, he 
was so good as to entertain me with my own story — of course with 
the popular feature that Pumblechook was my earliest benefactor 
and the founder of my fortunes. 

" Do you know the young man 1 " said I. 

" Know him ? " repeated the landlord. " Ever since he was — 
no height at all." 

"Does he ever come back to this neighbourhood?" 

" Ay, he comes back," said the landlord, " to his great friends, now 
and again, and gives the cold shoulder to the man that made him." 

"What man is that?" 

"Him that I speak of," said the landlord. " Mr. Pumblechook." 

" Is he ungrateful to no one else ? " 

"No doubt he would be, if he could," returned the landlord, 
"but he can't. And why? Because Pumblechook done everything 
for him." 

" Does Pumblechook say so ? " 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 361 

" Say so ! " replied the landlord. " He han't no call to say so." 

" But does he say so ? " 

" It would turn a man's blood to white wine winegar, to hear 
N him tell of it, sir," said the landlord. 

I thought, " Yet Joe, dear Joe, you never tell of it. Long-suffer- 
ing and loving Joe, you never complain. Nor you, sweet-tempered 
Biddy ! " 

" Your appetite's been touched like, by your accident," said the 
landlord, glancing at the bandaged arm under my coat. " Try a 
tenderer bit." 

"No thank you," I replied, turning from the table to brood over 
the fire. " I can eat no more. Please take it away." 

I had never been struck at so keenly, for my thanklessness to 
Joe, as through the brazen impostor Pumblechook. The falser he, 
the truer Joe ; the meaner he, the nobler Joe. 

My heart was deeply and most deservedly humbled as I mused 
over the fire for an hour or more. The striking of the clock 
aroused me, but not from my dejection or remorse, and I got up 
and had my coat fastened round my neck, and went out. I had 
previously sought in my pockets for the letter, that I might refer 
to it again, but I could not find it, and was uneasy to think that it 
must have been dropped in the straw of the coach. I knew very 
well, however, that the appointed place was the little sluice-house 
by the lime-kiln on the marshes, and the hour nine. Towards the 
marshes I now went straight, having no time to spare. 



CHAPTER LIIL 

It was a dark night, though the full moon rose as I left the 
enclosed lands, and passed out upon the marshes. Beyond their 
dark line there was a ribbon of clear sky, hardly broad enough to 
hold the red large moon. In a few minutes she had ascended out 
of that clear field, in among the piled mountains of cloud. 

There was a melancholy wind, and the marshes were very dis- 
mal. A stranger would have found them insupportable, and even 
to me they were so oppressive that I hesitated, half inclined to go 
back. But, I knew them, and could have found my way on a far 
darker night, and had no excuse for returning, being there. So, 
having come there against my inclination, I went on against it. 

The direction that I took, was not that in which my old home 
lay, nor that in which we had pursued the convicts. My back was 
turned t;owards the distant Hulks as I walked on, and, though I 
could see the old lights away on the spits of sand, I saw them over 



362 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

my shoulder. I knew the lime-kiln as well as I knew the old 
Battery, but they were miles apart ; so that if a light had been 
burning at each point that night, there would have been a long 
strip of the blank horizon between the two bright specks. 

At first, I had to shut some gates after me, and now and then to 
stand still while the cattle that were lying in the banked-up path- 
way, arose and blundered down among the grass and reeds. But 
after a little while, I seemed to have the whole flats to myself. 

It was another half-hour before I drew near to the kiln. The 
lime was burning mth a sluggish stifling smell, but the fires were 
made up and left, and no workmen were visible. Hard by was 
a small stone-quarry. It lay directly in my way, and had been 
worked that day, as I saw by the tools and barrows that were lying 
about. 

Coming up again to the marsh level out of this excavation — for 
the rude path lay through it — I saw a light in the old sluice- 
house. I quickened my pace, and knocked at the door with my 
hand. Waiting for some reply, I looked about me, noticing how 
the sluice was abandoned and broken, and how the house — of wood 
with a tiled roof — would not be proof against the weather much 
longer, if it were so even now, and how the mud and ooze were 
coated with lime, and how the choking vapour of the kiln crept in 
a ghostly way towards me. Still there was no answer, and I 
knocked again. No answer still, and I tried the latch. 

It rose under my hand, and the door yielded. Looking in, I saw 
a lighted candle on a table, a bench, and a mattress on a truckle 
bedstead. As there was a loft above, I called, " Is there any one 
here ? " but no voice answered. Then, I looked at my watch, and, 
finding it was past nine, called again, "Is there any one here?" 
There being still no answer, I went out at the door, irresolute what 
to do. 

It was beginning to rain fast. Seeing nothing save what I had 
seen already, I turned back into the house, and stood just within the 
shelter of the doorway, looking out into the night. While I was 
considering that some one must have been there lately and must 
soon be coming back, or the candle would not be burning, it came 
into my head to look if the wick were long. I turned round to do 
so, and had taken up the candle in my hand, when it was extin- 
guished by some violent shock, and the next thing I comprehended 
was, that I had been caught in a strong running noose, thrown over 
my head from behind. 

" Now," said a suppressed voice with an oath, " I've got you ! " 

"What is this?" I cried, struggling. "Who is it? Help, help, 
help ! " 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 363 

Not oiily were my arms pulled close to my sides, but the pres- 
sure on my bad arm caused me exquisite pain. Sometimes a 
strong man's hand, sometimes a strong man's breast, was set against 
my mouth to deaden my cries, and with a hot breath always close 
to me, I struggled ineffectually in the dark, while I was fastened 
tight to the wall. "And now," said the suppressed voice with 
another oath, " call out again, and I'll make short work of you ! " 

Faint and sick with the pain of my injured arm, bewildered by 
the surprise, and yet conscious how easily this threat could be put 
in execution, I desisted, and tried to ease my arm were it ever so 
little. But it was bound too tight for that. I felt as if, having 
been burnt before, it were now being boiled. 

The sudden exclusion of the night and the substitution of black 
darkness in its place, warned me that the man had closed a shutter. 
After groping about for a little, he found the flint and steel he 
wanted, and began to strike a light. I strained my sight upon the 
sparks that fell among the tinder, and upon which he breathed and 
breathed, match in hand, but I could only see his lips, and the blue 
point of the match ; even those but fitfully. The tinder was damp 
— no wonder there — and one after another the sparks died out. 

The man was in no hurry, and struck again with the flint and 
steel. As the sparks fell thick and bright about him, I could see 
his hands and touches of his face, and could make out that he was 
seated and bending over the table ; but nothing more. Presently 
I saw his blue lips again, breathing on the tinder, and then a flare 
of light flashed up, and showed me Orlick. 

Whom I had looked for, I don't know. I had not looked for 
him. Seeing him, I felt that I was in a dangerous strait indeed, 
and I kept my eyes upon him. 

He lighted the candle from the flaring match with great deliber- 
ation, and dropped the match, and trod it out. Then, he put the 
candle away from him on the table, so that he could see me, and 
sat with his arms folded on the table and looked at me. I made 
out that I was fastened to a stout perpendicular ladder a few 
inches from the wall — a fixture there — the means of ascent to the 
loft above. 

*'Now," said he, when we had surveyed one another for some 
time, " I've got you." 

" Unbind me. Let me go ! " 

"Ah!" he returned, "/'U let you go. I'll let you go to the 
moon, I'll let you go to the stars. All in good time." 

" Why have you lured me here ? " 

" Don't you know?" said he, with a deadly look. 

'' Why have you set upon me in the dark ? " 



364 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

" Because I mean to do it all myself. One keeps a secret better 
than two. Oh, you enemy, you enemy ! " 

His enjoyment of the spectacle I furnished, as he sat with his 
arms folded on- the table, shaking his head at me and hugging him- 
self, had a malignity in it that made me tremble. As I watched 
him in silence, he put his hand into the corner at his side, and took 
up a gun with a brass-bound stock. 

"Do you know this? "said he, making as if he would take 
aim at me. "Do you know w^here you saw it afore? Speak, 
wolf!" 

"Yes," I answered. 

" You cost me that place. You did. Speak ! " 

"What else could I do?" 

" You did that, and that would be enough, without more. How 
dared you come betwixt me and a young woman I liked ? " 

"When did I?" 

" When didn't you ? It was you as always give Old Orlick a 
bad name to her." 

"You gave it to yourself; you gained it for yourself. I could 
have done you no harm, if you had done yourself none." 

"You're a liar. And you'll take any pains, and spend any 
money, to drive me out of this country, will you ? " said he, repeat- 
in^ my words to Biddy, in the last interview I had with her. 
" Now, I'll tell you a piece of information. It was never so worth 
your while to get me out of this country, as it is to-night. Ah ! 
If it was all your money twenty times told, to the last brass far- 
den ! " As he shook his heavy hand at me, with his mouth snarl- 
ing like a tiger's, I felt that it was true. 

" What are you going to do to me ? " 

" I'm a going," said he, bringing his fist down upon the table 
with a heavy blow, and rising as the blow fell, to give it greater 
force, " I'm a going to have your life ! " 

He leaned forward staring at me, slowly unclenched his hand 
and drew it across his mouth as if his mouth watered for me, and 
sat do^vn again. 

" You was always in Old Orlick's way since ever you was a child. 
You goes out of his way this present night. He'll have no more 
on you. You're dead." 

I felt that I had come to the brink of my grave. For a mom.ent 
I looked wildly round my trap for any chance of escape ; but there 
was none. 

" More than that," said he, folding his arms on the table again, 
" I won't have a rag of you, I won't have a bone of you, left on 
earth. I'll put your body in the kiln — I'd carry two such to it, 



366 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

on my shoulders — and, let people suppose what they may of you, 
they shall never know nothing." 

My mind, ^\dth inconceivable rapidity, followed out all the con- 
sequences of such a death. Estella's father would believe I had 
deserted him, would be taken, would die accusing me ; even Herbert 
would doubt me, when he compared the letter I had left for him, 
with the fact that I had called at Miss Havisham's gate for only a 
moment ; Joe and Biddy would never know how sorry I had been 
tliat night, none would ever know what I had suffered, how true 
I had meant to be, what an agony I had passed through. The 
death close before me was terrible, but far more terrible than death 
was the dread of being misremembered after death. And so quick 
were my thoughts, that I saw myself despised by unborn generations 
— Estella's children, and their children — while the wretch's w^ords 
were yet on his lips. 

"Now, wolf," said he, "*afore I kill you like any other beast — 
which is wot I mean to do and wot I have tied you up for — I'll 
have a good look at you and a good goad at you. Oh, you enemy ! " 

It had passed through my thoughts to cry out for help again ; 
though few could know better than I, the solitary nature of the 
spot, and the hopelessness of aid. But as he sat gloating over me, 
I was supported by a scornful detestation of him that sealed my 
lips. Above all things, I resolved that I would not entreat him, 
and that I would die making some last poor resistance to him. 
Softened as my thoughts of all the rest of men were in that dire 
extremity ; humbly beseeching pardon, as I did, of Heaven ; melted 
at heart, as I was, by the thought that I had taken no farewell, and 
never now could take farewell, of those who were dear to me, or 
could explain myself to them, or ask for their compassion on my 
miserable errors ; still, if I could have killed him, even in dying, 
I would have done it. 

He had been diinking, and his eyes were red and bloodshot. 
Around his neck was slung a tin bottle, as I had often seen his 
meat and drink slung about him in other days. He brought the 
bottle to his lips, and took a fiery drink from it ; and I smelt the 
strong spirits that I saw flash into his face. 

" Wolf ! " said he, folding his arms again, " Old Orlick's a going 
to tell you somethink. It was you as did for your shrew sister." 

Again my mind, with its former inconceivable rapidity, had 
exhausted the whole subject of the attack upon my sister, her ill- 
ness, and her death, before his slow and hesitating speech had 
formed those words. 

" It was you, villain," said I. 

" I tell you it was your doing — I tell you it was done through 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 367 

you," he retorted, catching up the gun, and making a blow with 
the stock at the vacant air between us. "I come upon her from 
behind, as I come upon you to-night. I giv' it her ! I left her for 
dead, and if there had been a lime-kiln as nigh her as there is now 
nigh you, she shouldn't have come to life again. But it warn't Old 
Orlick as did it; it was you. You was favoured, and he was 
bullied and beat. Old Orlick bullied and beat, eh? Now you 
pays for it. You done it ; now you pays for it." 

He drank again, and became more ferocious. I saw by his tilt- 
ing of the bottle that there was no great quantity left in it. I 
distinctly understood that he was working himself up with its 
contents, to make an end of me. I knew that every drop it held, 
was a drop of my life. I knew that when I was changed into a 
part of the vapour that had crept towards me but a little while 
before, like my own warning ghost, he would do as he had done in 
my sister's case — make all haste to the town, and be seen slouch- 
ing about there, drinking at the ale-houses. My rapid mind pur- 
sued him to the town, made a picture of the street with him in it, 
and contrasted its lights and life with the lonely marsh and the 
white vapour creeping over it, into which I should have dissolved. 

It was not only that I could have summed up years and years 
and years while he said a dozen words, but that what he did say, 
presented pictures to me, and not mere words. In the excited and 
exalted state of my brain, I could not think of a place without seeing 
it, or of persons without seeing them. It is impossible to over-state 
the vividness of these images, and yet I was so intent, all the 
time, upon him himself — who would not be intent on the tiger 
crouching to spring ! — that I knew of the slightest action of his 
fingers. 

When he had drunk this second time, he rose from the bench 
on which he sat, and pushed the table aside. Then, he took up the 
candle, and shading it with his murderous hand so as to throw 
its light on me, stood before me, looking at me and enjoying the 
sight. 

" Wolf, I'll tell you something more. It was Old Orlick as you 
tumbled over on your stairs that night." 

I saw the staircase with its extinguished lamps. I saw the 
shadows of the heavy stair-rails, thrown by the watchman's lantern 
on the wall. I saw the rooms that I was never to see again ; here, 
a door half open ; there, a door closed ; all the articles of furniture 
around. 

" And why was Old Orlick there 1 I'll tell you something more, 
wolf. You and her have pretty well hunted me out of this country, 
so far as getting an easy living in it goes, and I've took up with 



368 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

new companions and new masters. Some of 'em writes my letters 
when I wants 'em wrote — do you mind 1 — writes my letters, wolf ! 
They writes fifty hands ; they're not like sneaking you, as writes 
but one. I've had a firm mind and a firm will to have your life, 
since you was do^vn here at your sister's buiying. I han't seen a 
way to get you safe, and I've looked arter you to know your ins and 
outs. For, says Old Orick to himself, ' Somehow or another I'll 
have him ! ' What ! When I looks for vou, I finds your uncle Pro vis, 
eh ? " 

Mill Pond Bank, and Chinks's Basin, and the Old Green Copper 
Rope- Walk, all so clear and plain ! Provis in his rooms, the signal 
whose use was over, pretty Clara, the good motherly woman, old 
Bill Barley on his back, all drifting by, as on the swift stream of 
my life fast running out to sea ! 

"You with a uncle too ! Why, I knowed you at Gargery's when 
you was so small a wolf that I could have took your weazen betwixt 
this finger and thumb and chucked you away dead (as I'd thoughts 
o' doing, odd times, when I saw you a loitering among the pollards 
on a Sunday), and you hadn't found no uncles then. No, not you ! 
But when Old Orlick come for to hear that your uncle Provis had 
mostlike wore the leg-iron wot Old Orlick had picked up, filed 
asunder, on these meshes ever so many year ago, and wot he kep 
by him till he dropped your sister with it, like a bullock, as he 
means to drop you — hey 1 — when he come for to hear that — 
hey? " 

In his savage taunting, he flared the candle so close at me, that 
I turned my face aside to save it from the flame. 

" Ah ! " he cried, laughing, after doing it again, " the burnt child 
dreads the fire ! Old Orlick knowed you was burnt, Old Orlick 
knowed you was a smuggling your uncle Provis away. Old Orlick's 
a match for you and knowed you'd come to-night .^ Now I'll tell you 
something more, wolf, and this ends it. There's them that's as 
good a match for your uncle Provis as Old Orlick has been for you. 
Let him 'ware them when he's lost his nevvy. Let him 'ware them, 
when no man can't find a rag of his dear relation's clothes, nor yet 
a bone of his body. There's them that can't and won't have Mag- 
witch — yes, / know the name ! — alive in the same land with 
them, and that's had such sure information of him when he was 
alive in another land, as that he couldn't and shouldn't leave it un- 
beknown and put them in danger. P'raps it's them that writes 
fifty hands, and that's not like sneaking you as writes but one. 
'Ware Compeyson, Mag^^dtch, and the gallows ! " 

He flared the candle at me again, smoking my face and hair, and 
for an instant blinding me, and turned his powerful back as he 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 869 

replaced the light on the table. I had thought a prayer, and had 
been with Joe and Biddy and Herbert, before he turned towards 
me again. 

There was a clear space of a few feet between the table and the 
opposite wall. Within this space, he now slouched backwards and 
forwards. His great strength seemed to sit stronger upon him than 
ever before, as he did this with his hands hanging loose and heavy 
at his sides, and with his eyes scowling at me. I had no grain of 
hope left. Wild as my inward hurry was, and wonderful the force 
of the pictures that rushed by me instead of thoughts, I could yet 
clearly understand that unless he had resolved that I was within a 
few moments of surely perishing out of all human knowledge, he 
would never have told me what he had told. 

Of a sudden, he stopped, took the cork out of his bottle, and 
tossed it away. Light as it was, I heard it fall like a plummet. 
He swallowed slowly, tilting up the bottle by little and little, and 
now he looked at me no more. The last few drops of liquor he 
poured into the palm of his hand, and licked up. Then with a 
sudden hurry of violence and swearing horribly, he threw the 
bottle from him, and stooped ; and I saw in his hand a stone- 
hammer with a long heavy handle. 

The resolution I had made did not desert me, for, without utter- 
ing one vain word of appeal to him, I shouted out with all my 
might, and struggled with all my might. It was only my head 
and my legs that I could move, but to that extent I struggled with 
all the force, until then unknown, that was within me. In the same 
instant I heard responsive shouts, saw figures and a gleam of light 
dash in at the door, heard voices and tumult, and saw Orlick emerge 
from a struggle of men, as if it were tumbling water, clear the 
table at a leap, and fly out into the night ! 

After a blank, I found that I was lying unbound, on the floor, 
in the same place, with my head on some one's knee. My eyes 
were fixed on the ladder against the wall, when I came to myself — 
had opened on it before my mind saw it — and thus as I recovered 
consciousness, I knew that I was in the place where I had lost it. 

Too indifferent at first, even to look round and ascertain who 
supported me, I was lying looking at the ladder, when there came 
between me and it, a face. The face of Trabb's boy ! 

" I think he's all right I " said Trabb's boy, in a sober voice ; 
" but ain't he just pale though ! " 

At these words, the face of him who supported me looked over 
into mine, and I saw my supporter to be 

" Herbert ! Great Heaven ! " 

" Softly," said Herbert. " Gently, Handel. Don't be too eager." 



370 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

" And our old comrade, Startop ! " I cried, as he too bent over 
me. 

" Remember what he is going to assist us in," said Herbert, " and 
be calm." 

The allusion made me spring up ; though I dropped again from 
the pain in my arm. " The time has not gone by, Herbert, has it? 
What night is to-night ? How long have I been here ? " For, I 
had a strange and strong misgiving that I had been lying there a 
long time — a day and a night — two days and nights — more. 

" The time has not gone by. It is still Monday night." 

"Thank God!" 

"And you have all to-morrow, Tuesday, to rest in," said Her- 
bert. "But you can't help groaning, my dear Handel. What 
hurt have you got ? Can you stand ? " 

"Yes, yes," said I, "I can walk. I have no hurt but in this 
throbbing arm." 

They laid it bare, and did what they could. It was violently 
swollen and inflamed, and I could scarcely endure to have it 
touched. But, they tore up their handkerchiefs to make fresh 
bandages, and carefully replaced 'it in the sling, until we could get 
to the town and obtain some cooling lotion to put upon it. In a 
little while we had shut the door of the dark and empty sluice- 
house, and were passing through the quarry on our way back. 
Trabb's boy — ^Trabb's overgrown young man now — went before 
us with a lantern, which was the light I had seen come in at the 
door. But, the moon was a good two hours higher than when I 
had last seen the sky, and the night though rainy was much 
lighter. The white vapour of the kiln was passing from us as we 
went by, and, as I had thought a prayer before, I thought a 
thanksgiving now. 

Entreating Herbert to tell me how he had come to my rescue 
— which at first he had flatly refused to do, but had insisted on 
my remaining quiet — I learnt that I had in my hurry dropped 
the letter, open, in our chambers, where he, coming home to bring 
with him Startop, whom he had met in the street on his way to 
me, found it, veiy soon after I was gone. Its tone made him 
uneasy, and the more so because of the inconsistency between it 
and the hasty letter I had left for him. His uneasiness increasing 
instead of subsiding after a quarter of an hour's consideration, he 
set off for the coach-office, with Startop, who volunteered his 
company, to make inquiry when the next coach went down. 
Finding that the afternoon coach was gone, and finding that his 
uneasiness grew into positive alarm, as obstacles came in his way, 
he resolved to follow in a post-chaise. So, he and Startop arrived 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 371 

at the Blue Boar, fully expecting there to find me, or tidings of 
me ; but, finding neither, went on to Miss Havisliam's, where they 
lost me. Hereupon they went back to the hotel (doubtless at 
about the time when I was hearing the popular local version of 
my o^Yn story), to refresh themselves and to get some one to 
guide them out upon the marshes. Among the loungers under 
the Boar's archway, happened to be Trabb's boy — true to his 
ancient habit of happening to be everywhere where he had no 
business — and Trabb's boy had seen me passing from Miss 
Havisham's, in the direction of my dining-place. Thus, Trabb's 
boy became their guide, and with him they went out- to the 
sluice -house : though by the town way to the marshes, which I 
had avoided. Now, as they went along, Herbert reflected, that I 
might, after all, have been brought there on some genuine and 
serviceable errand tending to Provis's safety, and bethinking 
himself that in that case interruption might be mischievous, left 
his guide and Startop on the edge of the quarry, and went on by 
himself, and stole round the house two or three times, endeavouring 
to ascertain whether all was right within. As he could hear 
nothing but indistinct sounds of one deep rough voice (this was 
while my mind was so busy), he even at last began to doubt 
whether I was there, Avhen suddenly I cried out loudly, and he 
answered the cries, and rushed in, closely followed by the other 
two. 

When I told Herbert what had passed ^vithin the house, he 
was for our immediately going before a magistrate in the town, 
late at night as it was, and getting out a warrant. But, I had 
already considered that such a course, by detaining us there, or 
binding us to come back, might be fatal to Provis. There was 
no gainsaying this difficulty, and we relinquished all thoughts of 
pursuing Orlick at that time. For the present, under the cir- 
cumstances, Ave deemed it prudent to make rather light of the 
matter to Trabb's boy; who I am convinced would have been 
much affected by disappointment, if he had known that his inter- 
vention saved me from the lime-kiln. Not that Trabb's boy was 
of a malignant nature, but that he had too much spare vivacity, 
and that it was in his constitution to want variety and excitement 
at anybody's expense. "When we parted, I presented him with 
two guineas (which seemed to meet his views), and told him that 
I was sorry ever to have had an ill opinion of him (which made 
no impression on him at all). 

Wednesday being so close upon us, we determined to go back 
to London that night, three in the post-chaise ; the rather, as we 
should then be clear away, before the night's adventure began to 



372 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

be talked of. Herbert got a large bottle of stutf for my arm, and 
by dint of having this stuff dropped over it all the night through, 
I was just able to bear its pain on the journey. It was daylight 
when we reached the Temple, and I went at once to bed, and lay 
in bed all day. 

My terror, as I lay there, of falling ill and being unfitted for to- 
morrow, was so besetting, that I wonder it did not disable me of 
itself. It would have done so, pretty surely, in conjunction with 
the mental wear and tear I had suffered, but for the unnatural strain 
upon me that to-morrow was. So anxiously looked forward to, 
charged with such consequences, its results so impenetrably hidden 
though so near. 

No precaution could have been more obvious than our refraining 
from communication with him that day ; yet this again increased 
my restlessness. I started at every footstep and every sound, be- 
lieving that he was discovered and taken, and this was the messen- 
ger to tell me so. I persuaded myself that I knew he was taken ; that 
there was something more upon my mind than a fear or a presenti- 
ment ; that the fact had occurred, and I had a mysterious knowl- 
edge of it. As the day wore on and no ill news came, as the day 
closed in and darkness fell, my overshadowing dread of being disabled 
by illness before to-morrow morning, altogether mastered me. My 
burning arm throbbed, and my burning head throbbed, and I fancied 
I was beginning to wander. I counted up to high numbers, to make 
sure of myself, and repeated passages that I knew in prose and 
verse. It happened sometimes that in the mere escape of a ftitigued 
mind, I dozed for some moments or forgot ; then I would say to 
myself with a start, " Now it has come, and I am turning delirious ! " 

They kept me very quiet all day, and kept my arm constantly 
dressed, and gave me cooling drinks. Whenever I fell asleep, I 
awoke with the notion I had had in the sluice-house, that a long 
time had elapsed and the opportunity to save him was gone. About 
midnight I got out of bed and went to Herbert, with the conviction 
that I had been asleep for four-and-twenty hours, and that Wednes- 
day was past. It was the last self-exhausting effort of my fretful- 
ness, for after that, I slept soundly. 

Wednesday morning was dawning when I looked out of win- 
dow. The winking lights upon the bridges were already pale, the 
coming sun was like a marsh of fire on the horizon. The river, still 
dark and mysterious, was spanned by bridges that were turning coldly 
gi'ey, with here and there at top a warm touch from the burning in 
the sky. As I looked along the clustered roofs, with church towers 
and spires shooting into the unusually clear air, the sun rose up, 
and a veil seemed to be di'awn from the river, and millions of sparkles 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 373 

burst out upon its waters. From me, too, a veil seemed to be 
drawn, and I felt strong and well. 

Herbert lay asleep in his bed, and our old fellow-student lay- 
asleep on the sofa. I could not dress myself without help, but I 
made up the fire which was still burning, and got some coffee ready 
for them. In good time they too started up strong and well, and 
we admitted the sharp morning air at the windows, and looked at 
the tide that was still flowing towards us. 

" When it turns at nine o'clock," said Herbert, cheerfully, " look 
out for us, and stand ready, you over there at Mill Pond Bank ! " 



CHAPTER LIV. 

It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and 
the wind blows cold : when it is summer in the light, and winter 
in the shade. We had our pea-coats with us, and I took a bag. 
Of all my worldly possessions I took no more than the few neces- 
saries that filled the bag. AVhere I might go, what I might do, or 
when I might return, were questions utterly unknown to me ; nor 
did I vex my mind with them, for it was wholly set on Provis's 
safety. I only wondered for the passing moment, as I stopped at 
the door and looked back, under what altered circumstances I 
should next see those rooms, if ever. 

We loitered down to the Temple stairs, and stood loitering there, 
as if we were not quite decided to go upon the water at all. Of 
course I had taken care that the boat sliould be ready, and eveiy- 
thing in order. After a little show of indecision, which there were 
none to see but the two or three amphibious creatures belonging to 
our Temple stairs, we went on board and cast off"; Herbert in the 
bow, I steering. It was then about high-water — half-past eight. 

Our plan was this. The tide, beginning to run down at nine, 
and being with us until three, we intended still to creep on after it 
had turned, and row against it until dark. We should then be 
well in those long reaches below Gravesend, between Kent and 
Essex, where the river is broad and solitary, where the water-side 
inhabitants are very few, and where lone public-houses are scattered 
here and there, of which we could choose one for a resting-place. 
There, we meant to lie by, all night. The steamer for Hamburg, 
and the steamer for Rotterdam, would start for London at about 
nine on Thursday morning. We should know at what time to 
expect them, according to where we were, and would hail the first ; 
so that if by any accident we were not taken aboard, we should 



374 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

have another chance. We knew the distinguishing marks of each 
vessel. 

The relief of being at last engaged in the execution of the pur- 
pose, was so great to me that I felt it difficult to realise the condi- 
tion in which I had been in a few hours before. The crisp air, the 
sunlight, the movement on the river, and the moving river itself — 
the road that ran with us, seeming to sympathise with us, animate 
us, and encourage us on — freshened me with new hope. I felt 
mortified to be of so little use in the boat; but there were few 
better oarsmen than my two friends, and they rowed with a steady 
stroke, that was to last all day. 

At that time, the steam-traffic on the Thames was far below its 
present extent, and watermen's boats were far more numerous. Of 
barges, sailing colliers, and coasting traders, there were perhaps as 
many as now ; but, of steam-ships, great and small, not a tithe or 
a twentieth part so many. Early as it was, there were plenty of 
scullers going here and there that morning, and plenty of barges 
dropping do^vn with the tide ; the navigation of the river between 
bridges, in an open boat, was a much easier and commoner matter 
in those days than it is in these ; and we went ahead among many 
skiffs and wherries, briskly. 

Old London Bridge was soon passed, and old Billingsgate mar- 
ket with its oyster-boats and Dutchmen, and the White Tower and 
Traitor's Gate, and we were in among the tiers of shipping. Here, 
were the Leith, Aberdeen, and Glasgow steamers, loading and 
unloading goods, and looking immensely high out of the water as 
we passed alongside; here, were colliers by the score and score, 
with the coal-whippers plunging off stages on deck, as counter- 
weights to measures of coal S"«dnging up, which were then rattled 
over the side into barges ; here, at her moorings, was to-morrow's 
steamer for Rotterdam, of which we took good notice ; and here 
to-morrow's for Hamburg, under whose bowsprit we crossed. And 
now I, sitting in the stern, could see with a faster beating heart, 
Mill Pond Bank and Mill Pond stairs. 

" Is he there 1 " said Herbert. 

" Not yet." 

" Right ! He was not to come down till he saw us. Can you 
see his signal ? " 

" Not well from here ; but I think I see it. — Now I see him ! 
Pull both. Easy, Herbert. Oars ! " 

We touched the stairs lightly for a single moment, and he was 
on board and we were off again. He had a boat-cloak with him, 
and a black canvas bag, and he looked as like a river-pilot as my 
heart could have wished. 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 375 

" Dear boy ! " he said, putting his arm on my shoulder, as he 
took his seat. " Faithful dear boy, well done. Thankye, thankye ! " 

Again among the tiers of shipping, in and out, avoiding rusty 
chain-cables, frayed hempen hawsers, and bobbing buoys, sinking 
for the moment floating broken baskets, scattering floating chips of 
wood and shaving, cleaving floating scum of coal, in and out, under 
the figure-head of the John of Sunderland making a speech to the 
winds (as is done by many Johns), and the Betsy of Yarmouth 
with a firm formality of bosom and her nobby eyes starting two 
inches out of her head ; in and out, hammers going in ship-builders' 
yards, saws going at timber, clashing engines going at things 
unknown, pumps going in leaky ships, capstans going, ships going 
out to sea, and unintelligible sea-creatures roaring curses over the 
bulwarks at respondent lightermen; in and out — out at last 
upon the clearer river, where the ships' boys might take their 
fenders in, no longer fishing in troubled waters with them over the 
side, and where the festooned sails might fly out to the wind. 

At the Stairs where we had taken him aboard, and ever since, I 
had looked warily for any token of our being suspected. I had 
seen none. We certainly had not been, and at that time as cer- 
tainly we were not, either attended or followed by any boat. If 
we had been waited on by any boat, I should have run in to shore, 
and have obliged her to go on, or to make her purpose evident. 
But, we held our own, without any appearance of molestation. 

He had his boat-cloak on him, and looked, as I have said, a 
natural part of the scene. It was remarkable (but perhaps the 
wretched life he had led accounted for it), that he was the least 
anxious of any of us. He was not indiff'erent, for he -told me that 
he hoped to live to see his gentleman one of the best of gentlemen 
in a foreign country ; he was not disposed to be passive or resigned, 
as I understood it ; but he had no notion of meeting danger half 
way. ^^Tien it came upon him, he confronted it, but it must come 
before he troubled himself. 

"If you knowed, dear boy," he said to me, "what it is to sit 
here alonger my dear boy and have my smoke, arter having been 
day by day betwixt four walls, you'd envy me. But you don't 
know what it is." 

" I think I know the delights of fi'eedom," I answered. 

" Ah," said he, shaking his head gravely. " But you don't know 
it equal to me. You must have been under lock and key, dear 
boy, to know it equal to me — but I ain't a going to be low." 

It occurred to me as inconsistent, that for any mastering idea, he 
shoidd have endangered his freedom and even his life. But I 
reflected that perhaps freedom without danger was too much apart 



376 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

from all the habit of his existence to be to him what it would be 
to another man. I was not far out, since he said, after smoking 
a little : 

"Yon see, dear boy, when I was over yonder, t'other side the 
world, I was always a looking to this side ; and it come flat to be 
there, for all I was a growing rich. Everybody knowed Magwitch, 
and Magwitch could come, and Magwitch could go, and nobody's 
head would be troubled about him. They ain't so easy concerning 
me here, dear boy — wouldn't be, leastwise, if they knowed where 
I was." 

"If all goes well," said I, "you will be perfectly free and safe 
again, within a few hours." 

"Well," he returned, drawing a long breath, "I hope so." 

"And think so?" 

He dipped his hand in the water over the boat's gunwale, and 
said, smiling with that softened air upon him which was not new 
to me : 

"Ay, I s'pose I think so, dear boy. We'd be puzzled to be 
more quiet and easy-going than w^e are at present. But — it's 
a flowing so soft and pleasant through the water, p'raps, as makes 
me think it — I was a thinking through my smoke just then, that 
w^e can no more see to the bottom of the next few hours, than we 
can see to the bottom of this river what I catches hold of. Nor 
yet we can't no more hold their tide than I can hold this. And 
it's nni through my fingers and gone, you see ! " holding up his 
dripping hand. 

" But for your face, I should think you were a little despondent," 
said I. 

" Not a bit on it, dear boy ! It comes of flowing on so quiet, 
and of that there rippling at the boat's head making a sort of a 
Sunday tune. Maybe I'm a growing a trifle old besides." 

He put his pipe back in his mouth with an undisturbed expres- 
sion of face, and sat as composed and contented as if we were already 
out of England. Yet he was as submissive to a word of advice as 
if he had been in constant terror, for, when we ran ashore to get 
some bottles of beer into the boat, and he was stepping out, I 
hinted that I thought he would be safest where he was, and he 
said, "Do you, dear boy"?" and quietly sat down again. 

The air felt cold upon the river, but it was a bright day, and 
the sunshine was very cheering. The tide ran strong, I took care 
to lose none of it, and our steady stroke carried us on thoroughly 
well. By imperceptible degrees, as the tide ran out we lost more 
and more of the nearer woods and hills, and dropped lower and 
lower between the muddy banks, but the tide was yet with us 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 377 

whew we were off Graveseud. As our charge was wrapped in his 
cloak, I purposely passed within a boat or two's length of the float- 
ing Custom House, and so out to catch the stream, alongside of 
two emigrant ships, and under the bows of a large transport with 
troops on the forecastle looking down at us. And soon the tide 
began to slacken, and the craft lying at anchor to swing, and pres- 
ently they had all swung round, and the ships that were taking 
advantage of the new tide to get up to the Pool, began to crowd 
upon us in a fleet, and we kept under the shore, as much out of 
the strength of the tide now as we could, standing carefully off 
from low shallows and mud-banks. 

Our oarsmen were so fresh, by dint of having occasionally let her 
drive with the tide for a minute or two, that a quarter of an hour's 
rest proved full as much as they wanted. We got ashore among 
some slippery stones while we ate and drank what we had with us, 
and looked about. It was like my own marsh country, flat and 
monotonous, and with a dim horizon ; while the winding river 
turned and turned, and the great floating buoys upon it turned 
and turned, and everything else seemed stranded and still. For 
now, the last of the fleet of ships was round the last low point we 
had headed ; and the last green barge, straw-laden, with a brown 
sail, had followed ; and some ballast-lighters, shaped like a child's 
first rude imitation of a boat, lay low in the mud; and a little 
squat shoal-lighthouse on open piles, stood crippled in the mud on 
stilts and crutches ; and slimy stakes stuck out of the mud, and 
slimy stones stuck out of the mud, and red landmarks and tide- 
marks stuck out of the mud, and an old landing-stage and an old 
roofless building slipped into the mud, and all about us was stag- 
nation and mud. 

We pushed off again, and made what way we could. It was 
much harder work now, but Herbert and Startop persevered, and 
rowed, and rowed, and rowed, until the sun went down. By that 
time the river had lifted us a little, so that we could see above the 
bank. There was the red sun, on the low level of the shore, in a 
purple haze, fest deepening into black ; and there was the solitary 
flat marsh ; and far away there were the rising grounds, between 
which and us there seemed to be no life, save here and there in 
the foreground a melancholy gull. 

As the night was fast falling, and as the moon, being past the 
full, would not rise early, we held a little council : a short one, for 
clearly our course was to lie by at the first lonely tavern we could 
find. So they plied their oars once more, and I looked out for 
anything like a house. Thus we held on, speaking little, for four 
or five dull miles. It was very cold, and a collier coming by us. 



378 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

with her galley-fire smoking and flaring, looked like a comfortable 
home. The night was dark by this time as it would be until 
morning ; what light we had, seemed to come more from the river 
than the sky, as the oars in their dipping struck at a few reflected 
stars. 

At this dismal time we were evidently all possessed by the idea 
that we were followed. As the tide made, it flapped heavily at 
irregular intervals against the shore; and whenever such a sound 
came, one or other of us was sure to start and look in that direc- 
tion. Here and there, the set of the current had worn down the 
bank into a little creek, and we were all suspicious of such places, 
and eyed them nervously. Sometimes, "What was that ripple?" 
one of us w^ould say in a low voice. Or another, " Is that a boat 
yonder 1 " And afterwards, we would fall into a dead silence, and 
I would sit impatiently thinking with what an unusual amount of 
noise the oars worked in the thowels. 

At length we descried a light and a roof, and presently after- 
wards ran alongside a little causeway made of stones that had been 
picked up hard by. Leaving the rest in the boat, I stepped ashore, 
and found the light to be in the window of a public-house. It was 
a dirty place enough, and I dare say not unknown to smuggling 
adventurers ; but there was a good fire in the kitchen, and there 
were eggs and bacon to eat, and various liquors to drink. Also, 
there were two double-bedded rooms — " such as they were," the 
landlord said. ISTo other company was in the house than the land- 
lord, his wife, and a grizzled male creature, the "Jack" of the 
little causeway, who was as slimy and smeary as if he had been 
low-water mark too. 

AVith this assistant, I went down to the boat again, and we all 
came ashore, and brought out the oars, and rudder, and boat-hook, 
and all else, and hauled her up for the night. We made a very 
good meal by the kitchen fire, and then apportioned the bedrooms : 
Herbert and Startop were to occupy one ; I and our charge the 
other. We found the air as carefully excluded from both as if air 
were fatal to life ; and there were more dirty clothes and bandboxes 
under the beds, than I should have thought the family possessed. 
But, we considered ourselves well off", notwithstanding, for a more 
solitary place we could not have found. 

While we were comforting ourselves by the fire after our meal, 
the Jack — who was sitting in a corner, and who had a bloated 
pair of shoes on, which he had exhibited while we were eating our 
eggs and bacon, as interesting relics that he had taken a few days 
ago from the feet of a drowned seaman washed ashore — asked me 
if we had seen a four-oared galley going up with the tide ? When 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 379 

I told him No, he said she must have gone down then, and yet she 
"took up too," when she left there. 

" They must ha' thought better on't for some reason or another," 
said the Jack, " and gone down." 

" A four-oared galley did you say ? " said I. 

"A four," said the Jack, "and two sitters." 

"Did they come ashore here?" 

" They put in with a stone two-gallon jar, for some beer. I'd 
ha' been glad to pison the beer myself," said the Jack, " or put 
some rattling physic in it." 

"Why?" 

"/know why," said the Jack. He spoke in a slushy voice, as 
if much mud had washed into his throat. 

" He thinks," said the landlord : a weakly meditative man with 
a pale eye, who seemed to rely greatly on his Jack.: "he thinks 
they was, what they wasn't." 

"/knows what I thinks," observed the Jack. 

"Tow thinks Custom 'Us, Jack?" said the landlord. 

" I do," said the Jack. 

" Then you're WTong, Jack." 

"Am I!" 

In the infinite meaning of his reply and his boundless confidence 
in his views, the Jack took one of his bloated shoes off, looked 
into it, knocked a few stones out of it on the kitchen floor, and put 
it on again. He did this with the air of a Jack who was so right 
that he could afford to do anything. 

" Why, what do you make out that they done with their but- 
tons, then. Jack ? " asked the landlord, vacillating weakly. 

"Done with their buttons?" returned the Jack. "Chucked 
'em overboard. Swallered 'em. Sowed 'em, to come up small 
salad. Done with their buttons ! " 

"Don't be cheeky. Jack," remonstrated the landlord, in a 
melancholy and pathetic way. 

"A Custom 'Us officer knows what to do with his Buttons," 
said the Jack, repeating the obnoxious word with the greatest con- 
tempt, " when they comes betwixt him and his own light. A 
Four and two sitters don't go hanging and hovering, up with one 
tide and down with another, and both with and against another, 
without there being Custom 'Us at the bottom of it." Saying 
which he went out in disdain ; and the landlord, having no one to 
rely upon, found it impracticable to pursue the subject. 

This dialogue made us all uneasy, and me very uneasy. The 
dismal wind was muttering round the house, the tide was flapping 
at the shore, and I had a feeling that we were caged and threat- 



380 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

ened. A four-oared galley hovering about in so unusual a way as 
to attract this notice, was an ugly circumstance that I could not 
get rid of. When I had induced Provis to go up to bed, I went 
outside with my two companions (Startop by this time knew the 
state of the case), and held another council. Whether we should 
remain at the house until near the steamer's time, which would be 
about one in the afternoon ; or whether we should put off early in 
the morning ; was the question we discussed. On the whole we 
deemed it the better course to lie where we were, until within an 
hour or so of the steamer's time, and then to get out in her track, 
and drift easily with the tide. Having settled to do this, we 
returned into the house and went to bed. 

I lay down mth the greater part of my clothes on, and slept 
well for a few hours. When I awoke, the wind had risen, and the 
sign of the house (the Ship) was creaking and banging about, with 
noises that startled me. Rising softly, for my charge lay fast 
asleep, I looked out of the window. It commanded the causeway 
where we had hauled up our boat, and, as my eyes adapted them- 
selves to the light of the clouded moon, I saw two men looking 
into her. They passed by under the window, looking at nothing 
else, and they did not go down to the landing-place which I could 
discern to be empty, but struck across the marsh in the direction 
of the Nore. 

My first impulse was to call up Herbert, and show him the two 
men going away. But, reflecting before I got into his room, which 
was at the back of the house and adjoined mine, that he and Startop 
had had a harder day than I, and were fatigued, I forbore. Going 
back to my window I could see the two men moving over the 
marsh. In that light, however, I soon lost them, and feehng very 
cold, lay down to think of the matter, and fell asleep again. 

We were up early. As he walked to and fro, all four together, 
before breakfast, I deemed it right to recount what I had seen. 
Again our charge Avas tlie least anxious of the party. It was very 
likely that the men belonged to the Custom House, he said quietly, 
and that they had no thought of us. I tried to persuade myself 
that it was so — as, indeed, it might easily be. However, I pro- 
posed that he and I should walk away together to a distant point 
we could see, and that the boat should take us aboard there, or as 
near there as might prove feasible, at about noon. This being 
considered a good precaution, soon after breakfast he and I set 
forth, without saying anything at the tavern. 

He smoked his pipe as we went along, and sometimes stopped 
to clap me on the shoulder. One would have supposed that it 
was I who was in danger, not he, and that he was reassuring me. 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 381 

We spoke very little. As we approached the point, I begged him 
to remain in a sheltered place, while I went on to reconnoitre ; for 
it was towards it that the men had passed in the night. He com- 
plied, and I went on alone. There was no boat off tlie point, nor 
any boat drawn up anywhere near it, nor were there any signs of 
the men having embarked there. But, to be sure the tide was 
high, and there might have been some footprints under water. 

When he looked out from liis shelter in the distance, and saw 
that I waved my hat to him to come up, he rejoined me, and there 
we waited ; sometimes lying on the bank wrapped in our coats, and 
sometimes moving about to warm ourselves : until we saw our 
boat coming round. We got aboard easily, and rowed out into the 
track of the steamer. By that time it wanted but ten minutes of 
one o'clock, and we began to look out for her smoke. 

But, it was half-past one before we saw her smoke, and soon 
after we saw behind it the smoke of another steamer. As they 
were coming on at full speed, we got the two bags ready, and took 
that opportunity of saying good bye to Herbert and Startop. We 
had all shaken hands cordially, and neither Herbert's eyes nor mine 
were quite dry, when I saw a four-oared galley shoot out from 
under the bank but a little way ahead of us, and row out into the 
same track. 

A stretch of shore had been as yet between us and the steamer's 
smoke, by reason of the bend and wind of the river ; but now she 
was visible coming head on. I called to Herbert and Startop 
to keep before the tide, that she might see us lying by for her, 
and adjured Pro vis to sit quite still, wrapped in his cloak. He 
answered cheerily, "Trust to me, dear boy," and sat like a 
statue. Meantime the galley, which was skilfully handled, had 
crossed us, let us come up mth her, and fallen alongside. Leav- 
ing just room enough for the play of the oars, she kept alongside, 
drifting when we drifted, and pidling a stroke or two when we 
pulled. Of the two sitters, one held the rudder lines, and looked 
at us attentively — as did all the rowers ; the other sitter was 
wrapped up, much as Provis was, and seemed to shrink, and 
whisper some instruction to the steerer as he looked at us. Not 
a word was spoken in either boat. 

Startop could make out, after a few minutes, which steamer was 
first, and gave me the word "Hamburg," in a low voice as we sat 
face to face. She was nearing us very fast, and the beating of her 
paddles grew louder and louder, I felt as if her shadow were 
absolutely upon us, when the galley hailed us. I answered. 

" You have a return transport there," said the man who held the 
lines. " That's the man, wrapped in the cloak. His name is Abel 



382 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

Magwitch, otherwise Provis. I apprehend that man, and call upon 
him to surrender, and you to assist." 

At the same moment, without giving any audible direction to his 
crew, he ran the galley aboard of us. They had pulled one sudden 
stroke ahead, had got their oars in, had run athwart us, and were 
holding on to our gunwale, before we knew what they were doing. 
This caused great confusion on board of the steamer, and I heard 
them calling to us, and heard the order given to stop the paddles, and 
heard them stop, but felt her driving down upon us irresistibly. In 
the same moment, I saw the steersman of the galley lay his hand on 
his prisoner's shoulder, and saw that both boats were swinging round 
with the force of the tide, and saw that all hands on board the 
steamer were running forward quite frantically. Still in the same 
moment, I saw the prisoner start up, lean across his captor, and pull 
the cloak from the neck of the shrinking sitter in the galley. Still 
in the same moment, I saw that the face disclosed, was the face of 
the other convict of long ago. Still in the same moment, I saw 
the face tilt backward with a white terror on it that I shall never 
forget, and heard a great cry on board the steamer and a loud splash 
in the water, and felt the boat sink from under me. 

It was but* for an instant that I seemed to struggle with a 
thousand mill-weirs and a thousand flashes of light ; that instant 
past, I was taken on board the galley. Herbert was there, and 
Startop was there ; but our boat was gone, and the two convicts 
were gone. 

What with the cries aboard the steamer, and the furious blowing 
off of her steam, and her driving on, and our driving on, I could not 
at first distinguish sky from water or shore from shore ; but the 
crew of the galley righted her with great speed, and, pulling certain 
swift strong strokes ahead, lay upon their oars, every man looking 
silently and eagerly at the water astern. Presently a dark object 
was seen in it, bearing towards us on the tide. No man spoke, but 
the steersman held up his hand, and all softly backed water, and 
kept the boat straight and true before it. As it came nearer, I saw 
it to be Magwitch, swimming, but not swimming freely. He was 
taken on board, and instantly manacled at the wrists and ankles. 

The galley was kept steady, and the silent eager look-out at the 
water was resumed. But the Rotterdam steamer now came up, and 
apparently not understanding what had happened, came on at 
speed. By the time she had been hailed and stopped, both steamers 
were drifting away from us, and we were rising and falling in a 
troubled wake of water. The look-out was kept, long after all was 
still again and the two steamers were gone ; but everybody knew 
that it was hopeless now. 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 383 

At length we gave it up, and pulled under the shore towards the 
tavern we had lately left, where we were received with no little 
surprise. Here, I was able to get some comforts for Magwitch — 
Pro vis no longer — who had received some very severe injury in 
the chest and a deep cut in the head. 

He told me that, he believed himself to have gone under the keel 
of the steamer, and to have been struck on the head in rising. The 
injury to his chest (which rendered his breathing extremely painful) 
he thought he had received against the side of the galley. He added 
that he did not pretend to say what he might or might not have 
done to Compeyson, but, that in the moment of his laying his hand 
on his cloak to idantify him, that villain had staggered up and 
staggered back, and they had both gone overboard together ; when 
the sudden wrenching of him (Magwitch) out of our boat, and the 
endeavour of his captor to keep him in it, had cajDsized us. He told 
me in a whisper that they had gone down, fiercely locked in each 
other's arms, and that there had been a struggle under water, and 
that he had disengaged liimself, struck out, and swam away. 

I never had any reason to doubt the exact truth of what he had 
told me. The officer who steered the galley gave the same account 
of their going overboard. 

When I asked this officer's permission to change the prisoner's wet 
clothes by purchasing any spare garments I could get at the public- 
house, he gave it readily : merely observing that he must take 
charge of eveiything his prisoner had about him. So the pocket- 
book which had once been in my hands, passed into the officer's. 
He further gave me leave to accompany the prisoner to London ; 
but, declined to accord that grace to my two friends. 

The Jack at the Ship was instructed where the drowned man 
had gone down, and undertook to search for the body in the places 
where it was likeliest to come ashore. His interest in its recovery 
seemed to me to be much heightened when he heard that it had 
stockings on. Probably, it took about a dozen drowned men to fit 
him out completely ; and that may have been the reason why the 
difi'erent articles of his dress were in various stages of decay. 

AYe remained at the public-house until the tide turned, and then 
Magwitch was carried down to the galley and put on board. Her- 
bert and Startop were to get to London by land, as soon as they 
could. We had a doleful parting, and when I took my place by 
Magwitch's side, I felt that that was my place henceforth while he 
lived. 

For now my repugnance to him had all melted away, and in the 
hunted wounded shackled creatm-e who held my hand in his, I only 
saw a man who had meant to be my benefactor, and who had felt 



384 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

afifectionately, gratefully, and generously, towards me with great 
constancy through a series of years. I only saw in him a much 
better man than I had been to Joe. 

His breathing became more difficult and painful as the night 
drew on, and often he could not repress a groan. I tried to rest 
him on the arm I could use, in any easy position ; but it was dread- 
ful to think that I could not be soriy at heart for his being badly 
hurt, since it was unquestionably best that he should die. That 
there were, still living, people enough who were able and willing to 
identify him, I could not doubt. That he would be leniently 
treated, I could not hope. He who had been presented in the worst 
light at his trial, who had since broken prison and been tried 
again, who had returned from transportation under a life sentence, 
and who had occasioned the death of the man who was the cause 
of his arrest. 

As we returned towards the setting sun we had yesterday left 
behind us, and as the stream of our hopes seemed all running back, 
I told him how grieved I was to think he had come home for my 
sake. 

" Dear boy," he answered, "I'm quite content to take my chance. 
I've seen my boy, and he can be a gentleman without me." 

No. I had thought about that while we had been there side by 
side. No. Apart from any inclinations of my own, I understand 
Wemmick's hint now. I foresaw tliat, being convicted, his posses- 
sions would be forfeited to the Crowm. 

"Lookee here, dear boy," said he. "It's best as a gentleman 
should not be knowed to belong to me now. Only come to see me 
as if you come by chance alonger Wemmick. Sit where I can see 
you when I am swore to, for the last o' many times, and I don't 
ask no more." 

"I will never stir from your side," said I, "when I am suffered 
to be near you. Please G-od, I will be as true to you as you have 
been to me ! " 

I felt his hand tremble as it held mine, and he turned his face 
away as he lay in the bottom of the boat, and I heard that old 
sound in his throat — softened now, like all the rest of him. It 
was a good thing that he had touched this point, for it put into my 
mind what I might not otherwise have thought of until too late : 
that he need never know how his hopes of enriching me had 
perished. 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 385 



CHAPTER LV. 

He was taken to the Police Court next day, and would have 
been immediately committed for trial, but that it was necessary to 
send down for an old officer of the prison-ship from which he had 
once escaped, to speak to his identity. Nobody doubted it ; but, 
Compeyson, who had meant to depose to it, was tumbling on the 
tides, dead, and it happened that there was not at that time any 
prison officer in London who could give the required evidence. I 
had gone direct to Mr. Jaggers at his private house, on my arrival 
over night, to retain his assistance, and Mr. Jaggers on the pris- 
oner's behalf would admit nothing. It was the sole resource, for 
he told me that the case must be over in five minutes when the 
witness was there, and that no power on earth could prevent its 
going against us. 

I imparted to Mr. Jaggers my design of keeping him in igno- 
rance of the fate of his wealth. Mr. Jaggers was querulous and 
angry with me for having "let it slip through my fingers," and 
said we must memorialise by-and-bye, and try at all events for some 
of it. But he did not conceal from me that although there might 
be many cases in which forfeiture would not be exacted, there were 
no circumstances in this case to make it one of them. I under- 
stood that very well. I was not related to the outlaw, or con- 
nected with him by any recognisable tie ; he had put his hand to 
no writing or settlement in my favour before his apprehension, and 
to do so now would be idle. I had no claim, and I finally resolved, 
and ever afterwards abided by the resolution, that my heart should 
never be sickened with the hopeless task of attempting to establish 
one. 

There appeared to be reason for supposing that the drowned 
informer had hoped for a reward out of this forfeiture, and had 
obtained some accurate knowledge of Magwitch's affairs. When 
his body was found, many miles from the scene of his death, and 
so horribly disfigured that he was only recognisable by the contents 
of his pockets, notes were still legible, folded in a case he carried. 
Among these were the name of a banking-house in New South 
"Wales where a sum of money was, and the designation of certain 
lands of considerable value. Both those heads of information 
were in a list that Magwitch, while in prison, gave to Mr. Jaggers, 
of the possessions he supposed I should inherit. His ignorance, 
poor fellow, at last served him ; he never mistrusted but that my 
inheritance was quite safe, with Mr. Jaggers's aid. 

After three days' delay, during which the crown prosecution 



886 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

stood over for the production of the witness from the prison-ship, 
the witness came, and completed the easy case. He was com- 
mitted to take his trial at the next Session, which would come on 
in a month. 

It was at this dark time of my life that Herbert returned home 
one evening, a good deal cast down, and said : 

" My dear Handel, I fear I shall soon have to leave you." 

His partner having prepared me for that, I was less surprised 
than he thought. 

" We shall lose a fine opportunity if I put off going to Cairo, 
and I am very much afraid I must go, Handel, when you most 
need me." 

" Herbert, I shall always need you,' because I shall always love 
you ; but my need is no greater now, than at another time." 

"You will be so lonely." 

" I have not leisure to think of that," said I. "You know that 
I am always with him to the full extent of the time allowed, and 
that I should be with him all day long, if I could. And when I 
come away from him, you know that my thoughts are with him." 

The dreadful condition to which he was brought, was so appall- 
ing to both of us, that we could not refer to it in plainer words. 

"My dear fellow," said Herbert, "let the near prospect of our 
separation — for, it is very near — be my justification for troubling 
you about yourself Have you thought of your future 1 " 

" No, for I have been afraid to think of any future." 

"But yours cannot be dismissed; indeed, my dear, dear Handel, 
it must not be dismissed. I wish you would enter on it now, as 
far as a few friendly words go, with me." 

"I will," said I. 

" In this branch house of ours, Handel, we must have a " 

I saw that his delicacy was avoiding the right word, so I said, 
"A clerk." 

"A clerk. And I hope it is not at all unlikely that he may 
expand (as a clerk of your acquaintance has expanded) into a part- 
ner. Now, Handel in short, my dear boy, will you come 

tome?" 

There was something charmingly cordial and engaging in the 
manner in which after saying, " Now, Handel," as if it were the 
grave beginning of a portentous business exordium, he had sud- 
denly given up that tone, stretched out his honest hand, and 
spoken like a schoolboy. 

"Clara and I have talked about it again and again," Herbert 
pursued, " and the dear little thing begged me only this evening, 
with tears in her eyes, to say to you that if you will live with us, 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 387 

when we come together, she will do her best to make you happy, 
and to convince her husband's friend that he is her friend too. 
We should get on so well, Handel ! " 

I thanked her heartily, and I thanked him heartily, but said I 
could not yet make sure of joining him as he so kindly offered. 
Firstly, my mind was too preoccupied to be able to take in the sub- 
ject clearly. Secondly Yes ! Secondly, there was a vague 

something lingering in my thoughts that will come out very near 
the end of this slight narrative. 

"But if you thought, Herbert, that you could, without doing 
any injury to your business, leave the question open for a little 
while " 

" For any while," cried Herbert. " Six months, a year ! " 

" Not so long as that," said I. " Two or three months at most." 

Herbert was highly delighted when we shook hands on this 
arrangement, and said he could now take courage to tell me that 
he believed he must go away at the end of the week. 

"And Clara?" said I. 

" The dear little thing," returned Herbert, " holds dutifully to 
her father as long as he lasts; but he won't last long. Mrs. 
Whimple confides to me that he is certainly going." 

"Not to say an unfeeling thing," said I, "he cannot do better 
than go." 

"I am afraid that must be admitted," said Herbert : "and then 
I shall come back for the dear little thing, and the dear little thing 
and I will walk quietly into the nearest church. Remember ! 
The blessed darling comes of no family, my dear Handel, and never 
looked into the red book, and hasn't a notion about her grandpapa. 
What a fortune for the son of my mother ! " 

On the Saturday in that same week, I took my leave of Herbert 

— full of bright hope, but sad and sorry to leave me — as he sat 
on one of the seaport mail coaches. I went into a coffee-house to 
write a little note to Clara, telling her he had gone off", sending his 
love to her over and over again, and then went to my lonely home 

— if it deserved the name, for it was now no home to me, and I 
had no home anywhere. 

On the stairs I encountered Wemmick, who was coming down, 
after an unsuccessful application of his knuckles to my door. I 
had not seen him alone, since the disastrous issue of the attempted 
flight ; and he had come, in his private and personal capacity, to 
say a few words of explanation in reference to that failure. 

" The late Compeyson," said Wemmick, " had by little and little 
got at the bottom of half of the regular business now transacted, 
and it was from the talk of some of his people in trouble (some of 



388 GEEAT EXPECTATIONS. 

his people being always in trouble) that I heard what I did. I 
kept my ears open, seeming to have them shut, until I heard that 
he was absent, and I thought that would be the best time for 
making the attempt. I can only suppose now, that it was part of 
his policy, as a very clever man, habitually to deceive his own 
instruments. You don't blame me, I hope, Mr. Pip? I'm sure 
I tried to serve you, with all my heart." 

" I am as sure of that, Wemmick, as you can be, and I thank 
you most earnestly for all your interest and friendship." 

" Thank you, thank you very much. It's a bad job," said Wem- 
mick, scratching his head, " and I assure you I haven't been so cut 
up for a long time. What I look at is, the sacrifice of so much 
portable property. Dear me ! " 

" What / think of, Wemmick, is the poor owner of the prop- 
erty." 

" Yes, to be sure," said Wemmick. " Of course there can be 
no objection to your being sorry for him, and I'd put down a five- 
pound note myself to get him out of it. But what I look at, is 
this. The late Compeyson having been beforehand with him in 
intelligence of his return, and being so determined to bring him to 
book, I do not think he could have been saved. Whereas, the 
portable property certainly could have been saved. That's the 
difference between the property and the owner, don't you see ? " 

I invited Wemmick to come upstairs, and refresh himself with 
a glass of grog before walking to Walworth. He accepted the 
invitation. While he was drinking his moderate allowance, he 
said, with nothing to lead up to it, and after having appeared 
rather fidgety : 

" What do you think of my meaning to take a holiday on Mon- 
day, Mr. Pip ? " 

" Why, I suppose you have not done such a thing these twelve 
months." 

"These twelve years, more likely," said Wemmick. "Yes. 
I'm going to take a holiday. More than that ; I'm going to take 
a walk. More than that ; I'm going to ask you to take a walk 
with me." 

I was about to excuse myself, as being but a bad companion just 
then, when Wemmick anticipated me. 

"I know your engagements," said he, " and I know you are out 
of sorts, Mr. Pip. But if you could oblige me, I should take it as 
a kindness. It ain't a long walk, and it's an early one. Say it 
might occupy you (including breakfast on the walk) from eight to 
twelve. Couldn't you stretch a point and manage it 1 " 

He had done so much for me at various times, that this was very 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 389 

little to do for him. I said I could manage it — would manage it 
— and he was so very much pleased by my acquiescence, that I 
was pleased too. At his particular request, I appointed to call for 
him at the Castle at half-past eight on Monday morning, and so 
we parted for the time. 

Punctual to my appointment, I rang at the Castle gate on the 
Monday morning, and was received by Wemmick himself: who 
struck me as looking tighter than usual, and having a sleeker hat 
on. Within, there were two glasses of rum-and-milk prepared, 
and two biscuits. The Aged must have been stirring with the 
lark, for, glancing into the perspective of his bedroom, I observed 
that his bed was empty. 

When we had fortified ourselves with the rum-and-milk and bis- 
cuits, and were going out for the walk with that training prepa- 
ration on us, I was considerably surprised to see Wemmick take up 
a fishing-rod, and put it over his shoulder. "Why, we are not 
going fishing ! " said I. " No," returned Wemmick, " but I like to 
walk with one." 

I thought this odd; however, I said nothing, and we set off: 
We went towards Camberwell Green, and when we were there- 
abouts, Wemmick said suddenly : 

" Halloa ! Here's a church ! " 

There was nothing very surprising in that; but again, I was 
rather surprised, when he said, as if he were animated by a brill- 
iant idea : 

" Let's go in ! " 

We went in, Wemmick leaving his fishing-rod in the porch, and 
looked all round. In the mean time, Wemmick was diving into 
his coat-pockets, and getting something out of paper there. 

" Halloa ! " said he. " Here's a couple of pair of gloves ! 
Let's put 'em on ! " 

As the gloves were white kid gloves, and as the post-office was 
widened to its utmost extent, I now began to have my strong sus- 
picions. They were strengthened into certainty when I beheld the 
Aged enter at a side door, escorting a lady. 

" Halloa ! " said Wemmick. " Here's Miss Skiffins ! Let's have 
a wedding." 

That discreet damsel was attired as usual, except that she was 
now engaged in substituting for her green kid gloves, a pair of 
white. The Aged was likewise occupied in preparing a similar sac- 
rifice for the altar of Hymen. The old gentleman, however, experi- 
enced so much difficulty in getting his gloves on, that Wemmick 
found it necessary to put him with his back against a pillar, and 
then to get behind the pillar himself and pull away at them, while 



390 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

I for my part held the old gentleman round the waist, that he 
might present an equal and safe resistance. By dint of this ingen- 
ious scheme, his gloves were got on to perfection. 

The clerk and clergyman then appearing, we were ranged in 
order at those fatal rails. True to his notion of seeming to do it 
all without preparation, I heard Wemmick say to himself as he 
took something out of his waistcoat-pocket before the service began, 
" Halloa ! Here's a ring ! " 

I acted in the capacity of backer, or best man, to the bridegroom ; 
while a little limp pew-opener in a soft bonnet like a baby's, made 
a feint of being the bosom friend of Miss Skiffins. The responsi- 
bility of giving the lady away, devolved upon the Aged, which led 
to the clergyman's being unintentionally scandalised, and it happened 
thus. When he said, " Who giveth this woman to be married to 
this man?" the old gentleman, not in the least knowing what 
point of the ceremony we had arrived at, stood most amiably beam- 
ing at the ten commandments. Upon which, the clergyman said 
again, "Who giveth this woman to be married to this man?" 
The old gentleman being still in a state of most estimable uncon- 
sciousness, the bridegroom cried out in his accustomed voice, " Now 
Aged P. you know ; who giveth ? " To which the Aged replied with 
great briskness, before saying that he gave, "All right, John, all 
right, my boy ! " And the clergyman came to so gloomy a pause 
upon it, that I had doubts for the moment whether we should get 
completely married that day. 

It was completely done, however, and when we were going out 
of church, Wemmick took the cover off the font, and put his white 
gloves in it, and put the cover on again. Mrs. Wemmick, more 
heedful of the future, put her white gloves in her pocket and assumed 
her green. ^'^ Noiv, Mr. Pip," said Wemmick, triumphantly shoul- 
dering the fishing-rod as we came out, " let me ask you whether 
anybody would suppose this to be a wedding party ! " 

Breakfast had been ordered at a pleasant little tavern, a mile or 
so away upon the rising ground beyond the green ; and there was 
a bagatelle board in the room, in case we should desire to unbend 
our minds after the solemnity. It was pleasant to observe that 
Mrs. Wemmick no longer unwound Wemmick's arm when it adapted 
itself to her figure, but sat in the high-backed chair against the 
wall, like a violoncello in its case, and submitted to be embraced as 
that melodious instrument might have done. 

We had an excellent breakfast, and when any one declined any- 
thing on table, Wemmick said, " Provided by contract, you know ; 
don't be afraid of it ! " I drank to the new couple, drank to the Aged, 
drank to the Castle, saluted the bride at parting, and made myself 
as aOTeeable as I could. 



GKEAT EXPECTATIONS. 391 

Wemmick came down to the door with me, and I again shook 
hands with him, and wished him joy. 

" Thank'ee ! " said Wemmick, rubbing his hands. '' She's such 
a manager of fowls, you have no idea. You shall have some eggs 
and judge for yourself. I say, Mr. Pip ! " calling me back and 
speaking low. " This is altogether a Walworth sentiment, please." 

"I understand. Not to be mentioned in Little Britain," said I. 

Wemmick nodded. " After what you let out the other day, Mr. 
Jaggers may as well not know of it. He might think my brain 
was softening, or something of the kind." 



CHAPTER LVI. 

He lay in prison very ill, during the whole interval between his 
committal for trial, and the coming round of the Sessions. He 
had broken two ribs, they had w^ounded one of his lungs, and he 
breathed with great pain and difficulty, which increased daily. It 
was a consequence of his hurt that he spoke so low as to be scarcely 
audible ; therefore, he spoke very little. But, he was ever ready to 
listen to me, and it became the first duty of my life to say to him, 
and read to him, what I knew he ought to hear. 

Being far too ill to remain in the common prison, he was removed, 
after the first day or so, into the infirmary. This gave me oppor- 
tunities of being with him that I could not otherwise have had. 
And but for his illness he would have been put in irons, for he was 
regarded as a determined prison-breaker, and I know not what else. 

Although I saw him every day, it was for only a short time ; 
hence the regularly recurring spaces of our separation were long 
enough to record on his face any slight changes that occurred in 
his physical state. *I do not recollect that I once saw any change 
in it for the better; he wasted, and became slowly weaker and 
worse, day by day from the day when the prison door closed upon 
him. 

The kind of submission or resignation that he showed, was that 
of a man who was tired out. I sometimes derived an impression, 
from his manner or from a whispered word or two which escaped 
him, that he pondered over the question whether he might have 
been a better man under better circumstances. But, he never jus- 
tified himself by a hint tending that way, or tried to bend the past 
out of its eternal shape. 

It happened on two or three occasions in my presence, that his 
desperate reputation was alluded to by one or other of the people in 
attendance on him. A smile crossed his face then, and he turned 



392 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

his eyes on me with a trustful look, as if he were confident that I 
had seen some small redeeming touch in him, even so long ago as 
when I was a little child. As to all the rest, he was humble and 
contrite, and I never knew him complain. 

When the Sessions came round, Mr. Jaggers caused an applica- 
tion to be made for the postponement of his trial until the follow- 
ing Sessions. It was obviously made with the assurance that he 
could not live so long, and was refused. The trial came on at once, 
and when he was put to the bar, he was seated in a chair. No 
objection was made to my getting close to the dock, on the outside 
of it, and holding the hand that he stretched forth to me. 

The trial was very short and very clear. Such things as could 
be said for him, were said — how he had taken to industrious 
habits, and had thriven lawfully and reputably. But, nothing 
could unsay the fact that he had returned, and was there in pres- 
ence of the Judge and Jury. It was impossible to try him for that, 
and do otherwise than find him guilty. 

At that time it was the custom (as I learnt from my terrible ex- 
perience of that Sessions) to devote a concluding day to the passing 
of Sentences, and to make a finishing effect with the Sentence of 
Death. But for the indelible picture that my remembrance now 
holds before me, I could scarcely believe, even as I write these 
words, that I saw two-and-thirty men and women put before the 
Judge to receive that sentence together. Foremost among the two- 
and-thirty was he ; seated, that he might get breath enough to keep 
life in him. 

The whole scene starts out again in the vivid colours of the 
moment, down to the drops of April rain on the windows of the 
court, glittering in the rays of April sun. Penned in the dock, as 
I again stood outside it at the corner with his hand in mine, were 
the two-and-thirty men and women; some defiant, some stricken 
with terror, some sobbing and weeping, some covering their faces, 
some staring gloomily about. There had been shrieks from among 
the women convicts, but they had been stilled, and a hush had 
succeeded. The sheriffs with their great chains and nosegays, other 
civic gewgaws and monsters, criers, ushers, a great gallery full of 
people — a large theatrical audience — looked on, as the two-and- 
thirty and the Judge were solemnly confronted. Then, the Judge 
addressed them. Among the wretched creatures before him whom 
he must single out for special address, was one who almost from 
his infancy had been an offender against the laws ; who, after 
repeated imprisonments and punishments, had been at length sen- 
tenced to exile for a term of years ; and who, under circumstances 
of great violence and daring, had made his escape and been resen- 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 393 

tenced to exile for life. That miserable man would seem for a time 
to have become convinced of his errors, when far removed from the 
scenes of his old offences, and to have lived a peaceable and honest 
life. But in a fatal moment, yielding to those propensities and 
passions, the indulgence of which had so long rendered him a 
scourge to society, he had quitted his haven of rest and repentance, 
and had come back to the country where he was proscribed. Being 
here presently denounced, he had for a time succeeded in evading 
the oflScers of Justice, but being at length seized while in the act of 
flight, he had resisted them, and had — he best knew whether by 
express design, or in the blindness of his hardihood — caused the 
death of his denouncer, to whom his whole career was known. 
The appointed punishment for his return to the land that had cast 
him out being Death, and his case being this aggravated case, he 
must prepare himself to Die. 

The sun was striking in at the great windows of the court, 
through the glittering drops of rain upon the glass, and it made a 
broad shaft of light between the two-and-thirty and the Judge, 
linking both together, and perhaps reminding some among the 
audience, how both were passing on, with absolute equality, to the 
greater Judgment that knoweth all things and cannot err. Rising 
for a moment, a distinct speck of face in this way of light, the 
prisoner said, "My Lord, I have received my sentence of Death 
from the Almighty, but I bow to yours," and sat down again. 
There was some hushing, and the Judge went on with what he had 
to say to the rest. Then, they were all formally doomed, and some 
of them were supported out, and some of them sauntered out with 
a haggard look of bravery, and a few nodded to the gallery, and 
two or three shook hands, and others went out chewing the frag- 
ments of herb they had taken from the sweet herbs lying about. 
He went last of all, because of having to be helped from his chair 
and to go very slowly ; and he held my hand while all the others were 
removed, and while the audience got up (putting their dresses right, 
as they might at church or elsewhere) and pointed down at this 
criminal or at that, and most of all at him and me. 

I earnestly hoped and prayed that he might die before the 
Recorder's Report was made, but, in the dread of his lingering on, 
I began that night to write out a petition to the Home Secretary 
of State, setting forth my knowledge of him, and how it was that 
he had come back for my sake. I wrote it as fervently and 
pathetically as I could, and when I had finished it and sent it in, 
I wrote out other petitions to such men in authority as I hoped 
were the most merciful, and drew up one to the Crown itself. 
For several days and nights after he was sentenced I took no rest. 



394 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

except when I fell asleep in my chair, but was wholly absorbed in 
these appeals. And after I had sent them in, I could not keep 
away from the places where they were, but felt as if they were 
more hopeful and less desperate when I was near them. In this 
unreasonable restlessness and pain of mind, I would roam the 
streets of an evening, wandering by those offices and houses where 
I had left the petitions. To the present hour, the weary west- 
ern streets of London on a cold dusty spring night, with their 
ranges of stern shut-up mansions and their long rows of lamps, 
are melancholy to me from this association. 

The daily visits I could make him were shortened now, and he 
was more strictly kept. Seeing, or fancying, that I was suspected 
of an intention of carrying poison to him, I asked to be searched 
before I sat down at his bedside, and told the officer who was 
always there, that I was willing to do anything that would assure 
him of the singleness of my designs. Nobody was hard with him 
or with me. There was duty to be done, and it was done, but 
not harshly. The officer always gave me the assurance that he 
was worse, and some other sick prisoners in the room, and some 
other prisoners who attended on them as sick nurses (malefactors, 
but not incapable of kindness, God be thanked !), always joined in 
the same report. 

As the days went on, I noticed more and more that he woidd 
lie placidly looking at the white ceiling, with an absence of light 
in his face, until some word of mine brightened it for an instant, 
and then it would subside again. Sometimes he was almost, or 
quite, unable to speak ; then, he would answer me with slight 
pressures on my hand, and I grew to understand his meaning very 
well. 

The number of the days had risen to ten, when I saw a greater 
change in him than I had seen yet. His eyes were turned towards 
the door, and lighted up as I entered. 

"Dear boy," he said, as I sat down by his bed: "I thought 
you was late. But I knowed you couldn't be that." 

" It is just the time," said I. " I waited for it at the gate." 

" You always waits at the gate ; don't you, dear boy ? " 

" Yes. Not to lose a moment of the time." 

" Thank'ee, dear boy, thank'ee. God bless you ! You've never 
deserted me, dear boy." 

I pressed his hand in silence, for I could not forget that I had 
once meant to desert him. 

"And what's the best of all," he said, "you've been more 
comfortable alonger me, since I was under a dark cloud, than 
when the sun shone. That's the best of aU." 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 395 

He lay on his back, breathing with great difficulty. Do what 
he would, and love me though he did, the light left his face ever and 
again, and a film came over the placid look at the white ceiling. 

" Are you in much pain to-day ? " 

" I don't complain of none, dear boy." 

"You never do complain." 

He had spoken his last words. He smiled, and I understood 
his touch to mean that he wished to lift my hand, and lay it on 
his breast. I laid it there, and he smiled again, and put both his 
hands upon it. 

The allotted time ran out, while we were thus; but, looking 
round, I found the governor of the prison standing near me, and 
he whispered, "You needn't go yet." I thanked him gratefully, 
and asked, " Might I speak to him, if he can hear me 1 " 

The governor stepped aside, and beckoned the officer away. 
The change, tliough it was made without noise, drew back the 
film from the placid look at the white ceiling, and he looked 
most affectionately at me. 

"Dear Magwitch, I must tell you now, at last. You under- 
stand what I say ? " 

A gentle pressure on my hand. 

" You had a child once, whom you loved and lost." 

A stronger pressure on my hand. 

"She lived and found powerful friends. She is living now. 
She is a lady and very beautiful. And I love her ! " 

With a last faint effort, which would have been powerless but 
for my yielding to it, and assisting it, he raised my hand to his 
lips. Then he gently let it sink upon his breast again, with his 
own hands lying on it. The placid look at the white ceiling came 
back, and passed away, and his head dropped quietly on his breast. 

Mindful, then, of what we had read together, I thought of the 
two men who went up into the Temple to pray, and I knew there 
were no better words that I could say beside his bed, than " Lord, 
be merciful to him a sinner ! " 



CHAPTER LVII. 

Now that I was left wholly to myself I gave notice of my 
intention to quit the chambers in the Temple as soon as my tenancy 
could legally determine, and in the meanwhile to underlet them. 
At once I put bills up in the windows ; for, I was in debt, and 
had scarcely any money, and began to be seriously alarmed by the 
state of my affairs. I ought rather to write that I should have 



396 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

been alarmed if I had had energy and concentration enough to 
help me to the clear perception of any truth beyond the fact that 
I was falling very ill. The late stress upon me had enabled me to 
put off illness, but not to put it away ; I knew that it was coming 
on me now, and I knew very little else, and was even careless as 
to that. 

For a day or two, I lay on the sofa, or on the floor — anywhere, 
according as I happened to sink down — with a heavy head and 
aching limbs, and no purpose, and no power. Then there came 
one night which appeared of great duration, and which teemed 
with anxiety and horror ; and when in the morning I tried to sit 
up in my bed and think of it, I found I could not do so. 

Whether I really had been down in Garden-court in the dead of 
the night, groping about for the boat that I supposed to be there ; 
whether I had two or three times come to myself on the staircase 
with great terror, not knowing how I had got out of bed ; whether 
I had found myself lighting the lamp, possessed by the idea that 
he was coming up the stairs, and that the lights were blown out ; 
whether I had been inexpressibly harassed by the distracted talk- 
ing, laughing, and groaning, of some one, and had half suspected 
those sounds to be of my own making ; whether there had been a 
closed iron furnace in a dark corner of the room, and a voice had 
called out over and over again that Miss Havisham was consuming 
within it ; these were things that I tried to settle with myself and 
get into some order, as I lay that morning on my bed. But the 
vapour of a hme-kiln would come between me and them, disordering 
them all, and it was through the vapour at last that I saw two 
men looking at me. 

" What do you want ? " I asked, starting ; "I don't know you." 

"Well, sir," returned one of them, bending down and touching 
me on the shoulder, " this is a matter that you'll soon arrange, I 
dare say, but you're arrested." 

"What is the debt?" 

"Hundred and twenty-three pound, fifteen, six. Jeweller's 
account, I think." 

"What is to be done?" 

"You had better come to my house," said the man. " I keep a 
very nice house." 

I made some attempt to get up and dress myself. When I next 
attended to them, they were standing a little off from the bed, 
looking at me. I still lay there. 

"You see my state," said I. "I would come with you if I 
could ; but indeed I am quite unable. If you take me from here, 
I think I shall die by the way." 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 397 

Perhaps they replied, or argiied the point, or tried to encourage 
me to believe that I was better than I thought. Forasmuch as 
they hang in my memory by only this one slender thread, I don't 
know what they did, except that they forbore to remove me. 

That I had a fever and was avoided, that I suffered greatly, that 
I often lost my reason, that the time seemed interminable, that I 
confounded impossible existences with my own identity ; that I was 
a brick in the house wall, and yet entreating to be released from 
the giddy place where the builders had set me ; that I was a steel 
beam of a vast engine, clashing and whirling over a gulf, and yet 
that I implored in my own person to have the engine stopped, and 
my part in it hammered off ; that I passed through these phases of 
disease, I know of my own remembrance, and did in some sort 
know at the time. That I sometimes struggled with real people, 
in the belief that they were murderers, and that I would all at 
once comprehend that they meant to do me good, and would then 
sink exhausted in their arms, and'suffer them to lay me down, I also 
knew at the time. But, above all, I knew that there was a con- 
stant tendency in all these people — who, when I was very ill, 
would present all kinds of extraordinary transformations of the 
human face, and would be much dilated in size — above all, I say, 
I knew that there was an extraordinary tendency in all these 
people, sooner or later, to settle down into the likeness of Joe. 

After I had turned the worst point of my illness, I began to 
notice that while all its other features changed, this one consistent 
feature did not change. Whoever came about me, still settled 
dovm. into Joe. I opened my eyes in the night, and I saw in the 
great chair at the bedside, Joe. I opened my eyes in the day, 
and, sitting on the window-seat, smoking his pipe in the shaded 
open window, still I saw Joe. I asked for cooling drink, and the 
dear hand that gave it me was Joe's. I sank back on my pillow 
after drinking, and the face that looked so hopefully and tenderly 
upon me was the face of Joe. 

At last, one day, I took courage, and said, "/s it Joe?" 

And the dear old home-voice answered, "^\Tiich it air, old chap." 

" Joe, you break my heart ! Look angry at me, Joe. Strike 
me, Joe. Tell me of my ingratitude. Don't be so good to me ! " 

For, Joe had actually laid his head down on the pillow at my 
side, and put his arm round my neck, in his joy that I knew him. 

""Which dear old Pip, old chap," said Joe, "you and me was 
ever friends. And when you're well enough to go out for a ride — 
what larks ! " 

After which, Joe withdrew to the window, and stood with his 
back towards me, wiping his eyes. And as my extreme weakness 



398 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

prevented me from getting up and going to him, I lay there, peni- 
tently whispering, " God bless him ! God bless this gentle 
Christian man ! " 

Joe's eyes were red when I next found him beside me ; but, I 
was holding his hand and we both felt happy. 

" How long, dear Joe 1 " 

" Which you meantersay, Pip, how long have your illness lasted, 
dear old chap 1 " 

"Yes, Joe." 

" It's the end of May, Pip. To-morrow is the first of June." 

"And have you been here all the time, dear Joe?" 

"Pretty nigh, old chap. For, as I says to Biddy when the 
news of your being ill were brought by letter, which it were 
brought by the post, and being formerly single he is now married 
though underpaid for a deal of walking and shoe-leather, but 
wealth were not a object on his part, and marriage were the great 
wish of his hart " 

"It is so delightful to hear you, Joe ! But I interrupt you in 
what you said to Biddy." 

"Which it were," said Joe, "that how you might be amongst 
strangers, and that how you and me having been ever friends, a 
wisit at such a moment might not prove unacceptabobble. And 
Biddy, her word were, ' Go to him, without loss of time.' That," 
said Joe, summing up with his judicial air, "were the word of 
Biddy. 'Go to him,' Biddy say, 'without loss of time.' In short, 
I shouldn't greatly deceive you," Joe added, after a little grave 
reflection, "if I represented to you that the word of that young 
woman were, 'without a minute's loss of time.'" 

There Joe cut himself short, and informed me that I was to be 
talked to in great moderation, and that I was to take a little 
nourishment at stated frequent times, whether I felt inclined for it 
or not, and that I was to submit myself to all his orders. So, I 
kissed his hand, and lay quiet, while he proceeded to indite a note 
to Biddy, with my love in it. 

Evidently Biddy had taught Joe to write. As I lay in bed 
looking at him, it made me, in my weak state, ciy again with 
pleasure to see the pride with which he set about his letter. My 
bedstead, divested of its curtains, had been removed, with me 
upon it, into the sitting-room, as the airiest and largest, and the 
carpet had been taken away, and the room kept always fresh and 
wholesome night and day. At my own writing-table, pushed into 
a corner and cumbered with little bottles, Joe now sat down to his 
great work, first choosing a pen from the pen-tray as if it were a 
chest of large tools, and tucking up his sleeves as if he were going 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 399 

to wield a crowbar or sledge-hammer. It was necessary for Joe to 
hold on heavily to the table with his left elbow, and to get his 
right leg well out behind him, before he could begin, and when he 
did begin he made every down-stroke so slowly that it might have 
been six feet long, while at every up-stroke I could hear his pen 
spluttering extensively. He had a curious idea that the inkstand 
was on the side of him where it was not, and constantly dipped his 
pen into space, and seemed quite satisfied with the result. Occa- 
sionally he was tripped up by some orthographical stumbling-block, 
but on the whole he got on very well indeed, and when he had signed 
his name, and had removed a finishing blot from the paper to the 
crown of his head with his two forefingers, he got up and hovered 
about the table, trying the effect of his performance from various 
points of view as it lay there, with unbounded satisfaction. 

Not to make Joe uneasy by talking too much, even if I had been 
able to talk much, I deferred asking him about Miss Havisham 
until next day. He shook his head when I then asked him if she 
had recovered ? 

"Is she dead, Joe?" 

" Why, you see, old chap," said Joe, in a tone of remonstrance, 
and by way of getting at it by degrees, " I wouldn't go so far as to 
say that, for that's a deal to say ; but she ain't " 

"Living, Joe?" 

"That's nigher where it is," said Joe; "she ain't living." 

" Did she linger long, Joe ? " 

" Arter you was took ill, pretty much about what you might call 
(if you was put to it) a week," said Joe ; still determined, on my 
account, to come at everything by degrees. 

" Dear Joe, have you heard what becomes of her property ? " 

"Well, old chap," said Joe, "it do appear that she had settled 
the most of it, which I meantersay tied it up, on Miss Estella. 
But she had wrote out a little coddleshell in her own hand a day 
or two afore the accident, leaving a cool four thousand to Mr. 
Matthew Pocket. And why, do you suppose, above all things, Pip, 
she left that cool four thousand unto him? 'Because of Pip's 
account of him the said Matthew.' I am told by Biddy, that air 
the writing," said Joe, repeating the legal term as if it did him in- 
finite good, " 'account of him the said Matthew.' And a cool four 
thousand, Pip ! " 

I never discovered from whom Joe derived the conventional 
temperature of the four thousand pounds, but it appeared to make 
the sum of money more to him, and he had a manifest relish in 
insisting on its being cool. 

This account gave me gi-eat joy, as it perfected the only good 



400 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

thing I had done. I asked Joe whether he had heard if any of the 
other relations had any legacies ? 

''Miss Sarah," said Joe, "she have twenty-five pound perannium 
fur to buy pills, on account of being bilious. Miss Georgiana, 

she have twenty pound down. Mrs. what's the name of them 

wild beasts with humps, old chap 1 " 

" Camels 1 " said I, wondering why he could possibly want to 
know. 

Joe nodded. "Mrs. Camels," by which I presently understood 
he meant Camilla, " she have five pound fur to buy rushlights to 
put her in spirits when she wake up in the night." 

The accuracy of these recitals was sufficiently obvious to me, to 
give me great confidence in Joe's information. " And now," said 
Joe, "you ain't that strong yet, old chap, that you can take in 
more nor one additional shovel-full to-day. Old Orlick he's been a 
bustin' open a dwelling-ouse." 

"Whose?" said I. 

" Not, I grant you, but what his manners is given to bluster- 
ous," said Joe, apologetically; "still, a Englishman's ouse is his 
Castle, and castles must not be busted 'cept when done in war 
time. And wotsume'er the failings on his part, he were a com 
and seedsman in his hart." 

"Is it Pumblechook's house that has beeij^ broken into, then 1 " 

"That's it, Pip," said Joe; "and they took his till, and they 
took his cash-box, and they drinked his wine, and they partook of 
his wittles, and they slapped his face, and they pulled his nose, and 
they tied him up to his bedpust, and they giv' him a dozen, and 
they stuffed his mouth full of flowering annuals to perwent his crying 
out. But he knowed Orlick, and Orlicfi's in the county jail." 

By these approaches we arrived at unrestricted conversation. 
I was slow to gain strength, but I did slowly and surely become 
less weak, and Joe stayed with me, and I fancied I was little Pip 
again. 

For, the tenderness of Joe was so beautifully proportioned to my 
need, that I was like a child in his hands. He would sit and talk^ 
to me in the old confidence, and with the old simplicity, anckiff t^e 
old unassertive protecting way, so that I would half believe that 
all my life since the days of the old kitchen was one of the mental 
troubles of the fever that was gone. He did everything for me 
except the household work, for which he had engaged a very decent 
woman, after paying off the laundress on his first arrival. " Which 
I do assure you, Pip," he would often say, in explanation of that 
liberty ; " I found her a tapping the spare bed, like a cask of beer, 
and drawiuo: off the feathers in a bucket, for sala Which she 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 401 

would have tapped yourn next, and draw'd it off with you a laying 
on it, and was then a carrying away the coals gradiwally in the soup- 
tureen and wegetable dishes, and the wine and spirits in your Wel- 
lington boots." 

We looked forward to the day when I should go out for a ride, 
as we had once looked forward to the day of my apprenticeship. 
And when the day came, and an open carriage was got into the 
Lane, Joe wrapped me up, took me in his arms, carried me down 
to it, and put me in, as if I were still the small helpless creature to 
whom he had so abundantly given of the wealth of his great nature. 

And Joe got in beside me, and we drove away together into the 
country, where the rich summer growth was already on the trees 
and on the grass, and sweet summer scents filled all the air. The 
day happened to be Sunday, and when I looked on the loveliness 
around me, and thought how it had grown and changed, and how 
the little wild flowers had been forming, and the voices of the birds 
had been strengthened, by day and by night, under the sun and 
under the stars, while poor I lay burning and tossing on my bed, 
the mere remembrance of having burned and tossed there, came 
like a check upon my peace. But, when I heard the Sunday bells, 
and looked around a little more upon the outspread beauty, I felt 
that I was not nearly thankful enough — that I was too weak yet, 
to be even that — and I laid my head on Joe's shoulder, as I had 
laid it long ago when he had taken me to the Fair or where not, 
and it was too much for my young senses. 

More composure came to me after a while, and we talked as we 
used to talk, lying on the grass at the old Battery. There was no 
change whatever in Joe. Exactly what he had been in my eyes 
then, he was in my eyes still ; just as simply faithful, just as 
simply right. 

When we got back again and he lifted me out, and carried me 
— so easily ! — - across the court and up the stairs, I thought of 
that eventful Christmas Day when he had carried me over the 
marshes. We had not yet made any allusion to my change of 
fortune, nor did I know how much of my late history he was ac- 
quainted with. I was so doubtful of myself now, and put so much 
trust in him, that I could not satisfy myself whether I ought to 
refer to it when he did not. 

"Have you heard, Joe," I asked him that evening, upon further 
consideration, as he smoked his pipe at the window, "who my 
patron was ? " 

"I heerd," returned Joe, "as it were not Miss Havisham, old 
chap." 

" Did you hear who it was, Joe ? '* 



402 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

" Well ! I heerd as it were a person what sent the person what 
giv' you the bank-notes at the Jolly Bargemen, Pip." 

" So it was." 

" Astonishing ! " said Joe, in the placidest way. 

"Did you hear that he was dead, Joe?" I presently asked, 
with increasing diffidence. 

" Which 1 Him as sent the bank-notes, Pip ? " 

"Yes." 

"I think," said Joe, after meditating a long time, and looking 
rather evasively at the window-seat, " as I did hear tell that how 
he were something or another in a general way in that direction." 

"Did you hear anything of his circumstances, Joe ? " 

" Not partickler, Pip." 

" If you would like to hear, Joe " I was beginning, when 

Joe got up and came to my sofa. 

"Lookee here, old chap," said Joe, bending over me. "Ever 
the best of friends ; ain't us, Pip ? " 

I was ashamed to answer him. 

"Werry good, then," said Joe, as if I had answered; "that's 
all right ; that's agreed upon. Then why go into subjects, old 
chap, which as betwixt two sech must be for ever onnecessary? 
There's subjects enough as betwixt two sech, without onnecessary 
ones. Lord ! To think of your poor sister and her Rampages ! 
And don't you remember Tickler 1 " 

"I do indeed, Joe." 

"Lookee here, old chap," said Joe. "I done what I could to 
keep you and Tickler in sunders, but my power were not always 
fully equal to my inclinations. For when yoiu' poor sister .had a 
mind to drop into you, it were not so much," said Joe, in his 
favourite argumentative way, "that she dropped into me too, if I 
put myself in opposition to her, but that she dropped into you 
always heavier for it. I noticed that. It ain't a grab at a man's 
whisker, nor yet a shake or two of a man (to which your sister 
was quite welcome), that 'ud put a man off from getting a little 
child out of punishment. But when that little child is dropped 
into, heavier, for that grab of whisker or shaking, then that man 
naterally up and says to himself, ' Where is the good as you are a 
doing? I grant you I see the 'arm,' says the man, *but I don't 
see the good. I call upon you, sir, therefore, to pint out the 
good.' " 

" The man says ? " I observed, as, Joe waited for me to speak. 

" The man says," Joe assented. " Is he right, that man ? " 

"Dear Joe, he is always right." 

"Well, old chap," said Joe, "then abide by your words. If 



GKEAT EXPECTATIONS. 403 

he's always right (which in general he's more likely wrong), he's 
right when he says this : — Supposing ever you kep any little 
matter to yourself, when you was a little child, you kep it mostly 
because you know'd as J. Gargery's power to part you and Tickler 
in sunders, were not fully equal to his inclinations. Theerfore, 
think no more of it as betwixt two sech, and do not let us pass 
remarks upon onnecessary subjects. Biddy giv' herself a deal o' 
trouble with me afore I left (for I am most awful dull), as I should 
view it in this light, and, viewing it in this light, as I should ser put 
it. Both of which, ^' said Joe, quite charmed with his logical ar- 
rangement, "being done, now this to you a tine friend, say. Namely. 
You mustn't go a overdoing on it, but you must have your sapper 
and your wine-and- water, and you nmst be put betwixt the sheets." 

The delicacy with which Joe dismissed this theme, and the sweet 
tact and kindness with which Biddy — who with her woman's wit 
had found me out so soon — had prepared him for it, made a deep 
impression on my mind. But whether Joe knew how poor I was, 
and how my great expectations had all dissolved, like our own 
marsh mists before the sun, I could not understand. 

Another thing in Joe that I could not understand when it first 
began to develop itself, but which I soon arrived at a sorrowful 
comprehension of, was this : As I became stronger and better, Joe 
became a little less easy with me. In my weakness and entire 
dependence on him, the dear fellow had fallen into the old tone, 
and called me by the old names, the dear "old Pip, old cliap," 
that now were music in my ears. I too had fallen into the old 
ways, only happy and thankful that he let me. But, impercepti- 
bly, though I held by them fast, Joe's hold upon them began to 
slacken ; and whereas I wondered at this, at first, I soon began to 
understand that the cause of it was in me, and that the fault of it 
was all mine. 

Ah ! Had I given Joe no reason to doubt my constancy, and 
to think that in prosperity I should grow cold to him and cast 
him off? Had I given Joe's innocent heart no cause to feel in- 
stinctively that as I got stronger, his hold upon me would be 
weaker, and that he had better loosen it in time and let me go, 
before I plucked myself away 1 

It was on the third or fourth occasion of my going out walking 
in the Temple Gardens, leaning on Joe's arm, that I saw this 
change in him very plainly. We had been sitting in the bright 
warm sunlight, looking at the river, and I chanced to say as we 
got up : 

" See, Joe ! I can walk quite strongly. Now, you shaU see me 
walk back by myself." 



404 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

"Which do not overdo it, Pip," said Joe; "but I shall be 
happy fur to see you able, sir." 

The last word grated on me ; but how could I remonstrate ! 
I walked no further than the gate of the gardens, and then pre- 
tended to be weaker than I was, and asked Joe for his arm. Joe 
gave it me, but was thoughtful. 

I, for my part, was thoughtful too ; for how best to check this 
growing change in Joe, was a great perplexity to my remorseful 
thoughts. That I was ashamed to tell him exactly how I was 
placed, and what I had come down to, I do not seek to conceal ; 
but, I hope my reluctance was not quite an unworthy one. He 
would want to help me out of his little savings, I knew, and I 
knew that he ought not to help me, and that I must not suffer 
him to do it. 

It was a thoughtful evening with both of us. But, before we 
went to bed, I had resolved that I would wait over to-morrow, 
to-morrow being Sunday, and would begin my new course with 
the new week. On Monday morning I would speak to Joe about 
this change, I would lay aside this last vestige of reserve, I would 
tell him what I had in my thoughts (that Secondly, not yet arrived 
at), and why I had not decided to go out to Herbert, and then the 
change would be conquered for ever. As I cleared, Joe cleared, 
and it seemed as though he had sympathetically arrived at a reso- 
lution too. 

We had a quiet day on the Sunday, and we rode out into the 
country, and then walked in the fields. 

"I feel thankful that I have been ill, Joe," I said. 

" Dear old Pip, old chap, you're a'most come round, sir." 

"It has been a memorable time for me, Joe." 

"Likeways for myself, sir," Joe returned. 

"We have had a time together, Joe, that I can never forget. 
There were days once, I know, that I did for a while forget ; but 
I never shall forget these." 

"Pip," said Joe, appearing a little hurried and troubled, "there 
has been larks. And, dear sir, what have been betwixt us — 
have been." 

At night, when I had gone to bed, Joe came into my room, as 
he had done all through my recovery. He asked me if I felt sure 
that I was as well as in the morning ? 

"Yes, dear Joe, quite." 

" And are always a getting stronger, old chap ? " 

"Yes, dear Joe, steadily." 

Joe patted the coverlet on my shoulder with his great good 
hand, and said, in what I thought a husky voice, " Good night ! " 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 405 

I 
When I got up in the morning, refreshed and stronger yet, 

I was full of my resolution to tell Joe all, without delay. I 

would tell him before breakfast. I would dress at once and go to 

his room and surprise him ; for, it was the first day I had been up 

early. I went to his room, and he was not there. Not only was 

he not there, but his box was gone. 

I hurried then to the breakfast-table, and on it found a letter. 

These were its brief contents : 

" Not wishful to intrude I have departured fur you are well again 
dear Pip and will do better without " Jo. 

"P.S. Ever the best of friends." 

Enclosed in the letter, was a receipt for the debt and costs on 
which I had been arrested. Down to that moment I had vainly 
supposed that my creditor had withdrawn or suspended proceedings 
until I should be quite recovered. I had never dreamed of Joe's 
having paid the money; but, Joe had paid it, and the receipt was 
in his name. 

What remained for me now, but to follow him to the dear old 
forge, and there to have out my disclosure to him, and my peni- 
tent remonstrance with him, and there to relieve my mind and 
heart of that reserved Secondly, which had begun as a vague some- 
thing lingering in my thoughts, and had formed into a settled 
purpose ? 

The purpose was, that I would go to Biddy, that I would show 
her how humbled and repentant I came back, that I would tell 
her how I had lost all I once hoped for, that I would remind her 
of our old confidences in my first unhappy time. Then, I would 
say to her, " Biddy, I think you once liked me very well, when my 
errant heart, even while it strayed away from you, was quieter 
and better with you than it ever has been since. If you can like 
me only half as well once more, if you can take me with all my 
faults and disappointments on my head, if you can receive me like 
a forgiven child (and indeed I am as sorry, Biddy, and have as 
much need of a hushing voice and a soothing hand), I hope I am 
a little worthier of you than I was — not much, but a little. 
And, Biddy, it shall rest with you to say whether I shall work 
at the forge with Joe, or whether I shall try for any different 
occupation do\vn in this country, or whether we shall go away to a 
distant place where an opportunity awaits me which I set aside 
when it was offered, until I knew your answer. And now, dear 
Biddy, if you can tell me that you will go through the world with 
me, you will surely make it a better world for me, and me a 



406 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

better man for it, and I will try hard to make it a better world 
for you." 

Such was my purpose. After three days more of recovery, I 
went down to the old place, to put it in execution. And how 
I sped in it, is all I have left to tell. 



CHAPTER LVIII. 

The tidings of my high fortunes having had a heavy fall, had 
got down to my native place and its neighbourhood, before I got 
there. I found the Blue Boar in possession of the intelligence, 
and I found that it made a great change in the Boar's de- 
meanour. Whereas the Boar had cultivated my good opinion 
with warm assiduity when I was coming into property, the Boar 
was exceedingly cool on the subject now that I was going out 
of property. 

It was evening when I arrived, much fatigued by the journey 
I had so often made so easily. The Boar could not put me into 
my usual bedroom, which was engaged (probably by some one who 
had expectations), and could only assign me a very indifferent 
chamber among the pigeons and post-chaises up the yard. But, 
I had as sound a sleep in that lodging as in the most superior 
accommodation the Boar could have given me, and the quality 
of my dreams was about the same as in the best bedroom. 

Early in the morning while my breakfast was getting ready, 
I strolled round by Satis House. There were printed bills 
on the gate and on bits of carpet hanging out of the windows, 
announcing a sale by auction of the Household Furniture and 
Effects, next week. The House itself was to be sold as old 
building materials, and piilled down. Lot 1 was marked in 
whitewashed knock-knee letters on the brewhouse; Lot 2 on that 
part of the main building which had been so long shut up. Other 
lots were marked off on other parts of the structure, and the ivy 
had been torn down to make room for the inscriptions, and much 
of it trailed low in the dust and was withered already. Stepping 
in for a moment at the open gate and looking around me with the 
uncomfortable air of a stranger who had no business there, I saw 
the auctioneer's clerk walking on the casks and telling them off 
for the information of a catalogue compiler, pen in hand, who 
made a temporaiy desk of the wheeled chair I had so often pushed 
along to the tune of Old Clem. 

When I got back to my breakfast in the Boar's coffee-room, 
I found Mr. Pumblechook conversing with the landlord. Mr. 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 407 

Piimblechook (not improved in appearance by his late nocturnal 
adventure) was waiting for me, and addressed me in the following 
terms. 

" Young man, I am sorry to see you brought low. But what 
else could be expected ! what else could be expected ! " 

As he extended his hand with a magnificently forgiving air, and 
as I was broken by illness and unfit to quarrel, I took it. 

"William," said Mr. Pumblechook to the waiter, "put a muffin 
on table. And has it come to this ! Has it come to this ! " 

I frowningly sat down to my breakfast. Mr. Pumblechook 
stood over me and poured out my tea — before I could touch the 
teapot — with the air of a benefactor who was resolved to be true 
to the last. 

"William," said Mr. Pumblechook, mournfully, "put the salt 
on. In happier times," addressing me, "I think you took sugar? 
And did you take milk ? You did. Sugar and milk. William, 
bring a wartercress." 

'•Thank you," said I shortly, "but I don't eat w^atercresses." 

"You don't eat 'em," returned Mr. Pumblechook, sighing and 
nodding his head several times, as if he might have expected that, 
and as if abstinence from watercresses were consistent with my 
downfall. " True. The simple fruits of the earth. No. You 
needn't bring any, William." 

I went on with my breakfast, and Mr. Pumblechook continued 
to stand over me, staring fishily and breathing noisily, as he 
always did. 

" Little more than skin and bone ! " mused Mr. Pumblechook, 
aloud. "And yet when he went away from here (I may say ^vith 
my blessing), and I spread afore him my humble store, like the Bee, 
he was as plump as a Peach ! " 

This reminded me of the wonderful diff'erence between the servile 
manner in which he had offered his hand in my new prosperity, 
saying, "May I?" and the ostentatious clemency with which he 
had just now exhibited the same fat five fingers. 

" Hah ! " he went on, handing me the bread-and-butter. " And 
air you a going to Joseph 1 " 

"In Heaven's name," said I, firing in spite of myself, "what 
does it matter to you where I am going? Leave that teapot 
alone." 

It was the worst course I could have taken, because it gave 
Pumblechook the opportunity he wanted. 

" Yes, young man," said he, releasing the handle of the article 
in question, retiring a step or two from my table, and speaking for 
the behoof of the landlord and waiter at the door, " I will leave 



408 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

that teapot alone. You are right, young man. For once, you are 
right. I forgit myself when I take such an interest in your break- 
fast, as to wish your frame, exhausted by the debilitating effects of 
prodigygality, to be stimilated by the 'olesome nourishment of your 
forefathers. And yet," said Pumblechook, turning to the landlord 
and waiter, and pointing me out at arm's length, " this is him as 
I ever sported with in his days of happy infancy ! Tell me not 
it cannot be ; I tell you this is him ! " 

A low murmur from the two replied. The waiter appeared to 
be particularly affected. 

" This is him," said Pumblechook, "as I have rode in my shay- 
cart. This is him as I have seen brought up by hand. This is 
him untoe the sister of which I was uncle by marriage, as her name 
was Georgiana M'ria from her own mother, let him deny it if he 
can!" 

The waiter seemed convinced that I could not deny it, and that 
it gave the case a black look. 

"Young man," said Pumblechook, screwing his head at me in 
the old fashion, " you air a going to Joseph. What does it matter 
to me, you ask me, where you air a going 1 I say to you, sir, you 
air a going to Joseph." 

The waiter coughed, as if he modestly invited me to get over 
that. 

"Now," said Pumblechook, and all this with a most exasperat- 
ing air of saying in the cause of virtue what was perfectly convinc- 
ing and conclusive, " I will tell you what to say to Joseph. Here 
is Squires of the Boar present, known and respected in this town, 
and here is William, which his father's name was Potkins if I do 
not deceive myself" 

"You do not, sir," said William. 

"In their presence," pursued Pumblechook, "I will tell you, 
young man, what to say to Joseph. Says you, 'Joseph, I have 
this day seen my earliest benefactor and the founder of my fortun's. 
I will name no names, Joseph, but so they are pleased to caU him 
up-town, and I have seen that man.' " 

"I swear I don't see him here," said I. 

"Say that likewise," retorted Pumblechook. "Say you said 
that, and even Joseph will probably betray surprise." 

" There you quite mistake him," said I. "I know better." 

" Says you," Pumblechook went on, " ' Joseph, I have seen that 
man, and that man bears you no malice and bears me no malice. 
He knows your character, Joseph, and is well acquainted with your 
pig-headedness and ignorance ; and he knows my character, Joseph, 
and he knows my want of gratitoode. Yes, Joseph,' says you," 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 409 

here Pumblechook shook his head and hand at me, " 'he knows my 
total deficiency of common human gratitoode. He knows it, Joseph, 
as none can. You do not know it, Joseph, having no call to know it, 
but that man do.' " 

Windy donkey as he was, it really amazed me that he could have 
the face to talk thus to mine. 

" Says you, ' Joseph, he gave me a little message, which I will 
now repeat. It was, that in my being brought low, he saw the fin- 
ger of Providence. He knowed that finger when he saw it, Joseph, 
and he saw it plain. It pinted out this writing, Joseph. Reward 
of ingratitoode to earliest benefactor, and founder of fortunes. 
But that man said that he did not repent of what he had done, 
Joseph. Not at all. It was right to do it, it was kind to do it, 
it was benevolent to do it, and he would do it again.' " 

" It's a pity," said I, scornfully, as I finished my interrupted 
breakfast, " that the man did not say what he had done and would 
do again." 

" Squires of the Boar ! " Pumblechook was now addressing the 
landlord, " and William ! I have no objections to your mentioning, 
either up-town or down-town, if such should be your wishes, that 
it was right to do it, kind to do it, benevolent to do it, and that I 
would do it again." 

With those words the Impostor shook them both by the hand, 
with an air, and left the house ; leaving me much more astonished 
than delighted by the virtues of that same indefinite "it." I was 
not long after him in leaving the house too, and when I went down 
the High-street I saw him holding forth (no doubt to the same 
effect) at his shop door to a select group, who honoured me with 
very unfavourable glances as I passed on the opposite side of the 
way. 

But, it was only the pleasanter to turn to Biddy and to Joe, 
whose great forbearance shone more brightly than before, if that 
could be, contrasted with this brazen pretender. I went towards 
them slowly, for my limbs were weak, but with a sense of increas- 
ing telief as I drew nearer to them, and a sense of leaving arrogance 
and untruthfulness further and further behind. 

The June weather was delicious. The sky was blue, the larks 
were soaring high over the green corn, I thought all that country- 
side more beautiful and peaceful by far than I had ever known it 
to be yet. Many pleasant pictures of the life that I would lead 
there, and of the change for the better that would come over my 
character when I had a guiding spirit at my side whose simple 
faith and clear home-wisdom I had proved, beguiled my way. 
They awakened a tender emotion in me ; for, my heart was soft- 



410 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

ened by my return, and such a change had come to pass, that I felt 
like one who was toiling home barefoot from distant travel, and 
whose wanderings had lasted many years. 

The schoolhouse where Biddy was mistress, I had never seen; 
but, the little roundabout lane by which I entered the village for 
quietness' sake, took me past it. I was disappointed to find that 
the day was a holiday ; no children were there, and Biddy's house 
was closed. Some hopeful notion of seeing her, busily engaged in 
her daily duties, before she saw me, had been in my mind and was 
defeated. 

But, the forge was a very short distance off, and I went towards 
it under the sweet green limes, listening for the clink of Joe's ham- 
mer. Long after I ought to have heard it, and long after I had 
fancied I heard it and found it but a fancy, all was still. The 
limes were there, and the white thorns were there, and the 
chestnut-trees were there, and the leaves rustled harmoniously 
when I stopped to listen ; but, the clink of Joe's hammer was not 
in the midsummer wind. 

Almost fearing, without knowing why, to come in view of the 
forge, I saw it at last, and saw that it was closed. No gleam of 
fire, no glittering shower of sparks, no roar of bellows; all shut 
up, and still. 

But, the house was not deserted, and the best parlour seemed to 
be in use, for there were white curtains fluttering in its window, 
and the window was open and gay with flowers. I went softly 
towards it, meaning to peep over the flowers, when Joe and Biddy 
stood before me, arm in arm. 

At first Biddy gave a cry, as if she thought it was my apparition, 
but in another moment she was in my embrace. I wept to see her, 
and she wept to see me ; I, because she looked so fresh and pleas- 
ant ; she, because I looked so worn and white. 

" But, dear Biddy, how smart you are ! " 

"Yes, dear Pip." 

" And Joe, how smart 7/ou are ! " 

"Yes, dear old Pip, old chap." 

I looked at both of them, from one to the other, and then 

" It's my wedding-day," cried Biddy, in a burst of happiness, 
" and I am married to Joe ! " 

They had taken me into the kitchen, and I had laid my head 
down on the old deal table. Biddy held one of my hands to her 
lips, and Joe's restoring touch was on my shoulder. " Which he 
warn't strong enough, my dear, fur to be surprised," said Joe. And 
Biddy said, " I ought to have thought of it, dear Joe, but I was too 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 411 

happy." They were both so overjoyed to see me, so proud to see 
me, so touched by my coming to them, so dehghted that I should 
have come by accident to make their day complete ! 

My first thought was one of great thankfulness that I had 
never breathed this last baffled hope to Joe. How often, while 
he was with me in my illness, had it risen to my lips. How 
irrevocable would have been his knowledge of it, if he had remained 
with me but another hour ! 

"Dear Biddy," said I, " you have the best husband in the whole 
world, and if you could have seen him by my bed you would have 
But no, you couldn't love him better than you do." 

"No, I couldn't indeed," said Biddy. 

"And, dear Joe, you have the best wife in the whole world, 
and she will make you as happy as even you deserve to be, you 
dear, good, noble Joe ! " 

Joe looked at me with a quivering lip, and fairly put his sleeve 
before his eyes. 

"And Joe and Biddy both, as you have been to church to-day 
and are in charity and love with all mankind, receive my humble 
thanks for all you have done for me, and all I have so ill repaid ! 
And when I say that I am going away within the hour, for I am 
soon going abroad, and that I shall never rest until I have worked 
for the money with which you have kept me out of prison, and 
have sent it to you, don't think, dear Joe and Biddy, that if I 
could repay it a thousand times over, I suppose I could cancel a 
farthing of the debt I owe you, or that I would do so if I could ! " 

They were both melted by these words, and both entreated me 
to say no more. 

"But I must say more. Dear Joe, I hope you will have chil- 
dren to love, and that some little fellow will sit in this chimney 
corner of a winter night, who may remind you of another little 
fellow gone out of it for ever. Don't tell him, Joe, that I was 
thankless; don't tell him, Biddy, that I was ungenerous and 
unjust ; only tell him that I honoured you both, because you were 
both so good and true, and that, as your child, I said it would be 
natural to him to grow up a much better man than I did." 

" I ain't a going," said Joe, from behind his sleeve, " to tell 
him nothink o' that natur, Pip. Nor Biddy ain't. Nor yet no 
one ain't." 

" And now, though I know you have already done it in your 
own kind hearts, pray tell me, both, that you forgive me ! Pray 
let me hear you say the words, that I may carry the sound of 
them away with me, and then I shall be able to believe that you 
can trust me, and think better of me, in the time to come ! " 



412 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

"0 dear old Pip, old chap," said Joe. "God knows as I 
forgive you, if I have anythink to forgive ! " 

"Amen ! And God knows I do ! " echoed Biddy. 

" Now let me go up and look at my old little room, and rest 
there a few minutes by myself And then when I have eaten 
and drunk with you, go with me as far as the finger-post, dear 
Joe and Biddy, before we say good bye ! " 



I sold all I had, and put aside as much as I could, for a com- 
position with my creditors — who gave me ample time to pay 
them in fidl — and I went out and joined Herbert. Within a 
month, I had quitted England, and within two months I was clerk 
to Clarriker and Co., and within four months I assumed my first 
undivided responsibility. For, the beam across the parlour ceiling 
at Mill Pond Bank, had then ceased to tremble under old Bill 
Barley's growls and was at peace, and Herbert had gone away to 
marry Clara, and I was left in sole charge of the Eastern Branch 
until he brought her back. 

Many a year went round, before I was a partner in the House ; 
but, I lived happily with Herbert and his wife, and lived frugally, 
and paid my debts, and maintained a constant correspondence 
with Biddy and Joe. It was not until I became third in the Firm, 
that Clarriker betrayed me to Herbert ; but, he then declared that 
the secret of Herbert's partnership had been long enough upon his 
conscience, and he must tell it. So, he told it, and Herbert was 
as much moved as amazed, and the dear fellow^ and I were not the 
worse friends for the long concealment. I must not leave it to be 
supposed that we were ever a great House, or that we made mints 
of money. We were not in a grand way of business, but we had 
a good name, and worked for our profits, and did very well. We 
owed so much to Herbert's ever cheerfid industry and readiness, 
that I often wondered how I had conceived that old idea of his 
inaptitude, until I was one day enlightened by the reflection, that 
perhaps the inaptitude had never been in him at aU, but had been 
in me. 

CHAPTER LIX. 

For eleven years I had not seen Joe nor Biddy with my bodily 
eyes — though they had both been often before my fancy in the 
East — when, upon an evening in December, an hour or two after 
dark, I laid my hand softly on the latch of the old kitchen door. 
I touched it so softly that I was not heard, and I looked in unseen. 
There, smoking his pipe in the old place by the kitchen firelight, 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 413 

as hale and as strong as ever, though a little grey, sat Joe ; and 
there, fenced in the corner with Joe's leg, and sitting on my own 
little stool looking at the fire, was 1 again! 

"We giv' him the name of Pip for your sake, dear old chap," 
said Joe, delighted when I took another stool by the child's side 
(but I did not rumple his hair), "and we hoped he might grow 
a little bit like you, and we think he do." 

I thought so too, and I took him out for a walk next morning, 
and we talked immensely, understanding one another to perfection. 
And I took him down to the churchyard, and set him on a certain 
tombstone there, and he showed me from that elevation which stone 
was sacred to the memory of Philip Pirrip, late of this Parish, and 
Also Georgiana, Wife of the Above. 

"Biddy," said I, when I talked with her after dinner, as her 
little girl lay sleeping in her lap, " you must give Pip to me, one 
of these days ; or lend him, at all events." 

"No, no," said Biddy, gently. "You must marry." 

"So Herbert and Clara say, but I don't think I shall, Biddy. 
I have so settled down in their home, that it's not at all likely. 
I am already quite an old bachelor." 

Biddy looked down at her child, and put its little hand to her lips, 
and then put the good matronly hand with which she had touched 
it, into mine. There was something in the action and in the light 
pressure of Biddy's wedding-ring, that had a very pretty eloquence 
in it. 

"Dear Pip," said Biddy, "you are sure you don't fret for her?" 

"0 no — I think not, Biddy." 

" Tell me as an old friend. Have you quite forgotten her ? " 

" My dear Biddy, I have forgotten nothing in my life that ever 
had a foremost place there, and little that ever had any place there. 
But that poor dream, as I once used to call it, has all gone by, 
Biddy, all gone by ! " 

Nevertheless, I knew while I said those Avords, that I secretly 
intended to revisit the site of the old house that evening, alone, for 
her sake. Yes, even so. For Estella's sake. 

I had heard of her as leading a most unhappy life, and as being 
• separated from her husband, who had used her with great cruelty, 
and who had become quite renowned as a compound of pride, ava- 
rice, brutality, and meanness. And I had heard of the death of her 
husband, from an accident consequent on his ill-treatment of a 
horse. This release had befallen her some two years before ; for 
anything I knew, she was married again. 

The early dinner-hour at Joe's left me abundance of time, with- 
out hurrying my talk with Biddy, to walk over to the old spot before 



414 GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

dark. But, what with loitering on the way, to look at old objects 
and to think of old times, the day had quite declined when I came 
to the place. 

There was no house now, no brewery, no building whatever left, 
but the wall of the old garden. The cleared space had been 
enclosed with a rough fence, and looking over it, I saw that some 
of the old ivy had struck root anew, and was growing green on low 
quiet mounds of ruin. A gate in the fence standing ajar, I pushed 
it open, and went in. 

A cold silvery mist had veiled the afternoon, and the moon was 
not yet up to scatter it. But, the stars were shining beyond the 
mist, and the moon was coming, and the evening was not dark. 
I could trace out where every part of the old house had been, and 
where the brewery had been, and where the gates, and where the 
casks. I had done so, and was looking along the desolate garden- 
walk, when I beheld a solitary figure in it. 

The figure showed itself aware of me as I advanced. It had 
been moving towards me, but it stood still. As I drew nearer, I 
saw it to be the figure of a woman. As I drew nearer yet, it was 
about to turn away, when it stopped, and let me come up with it. 
Then, it faltered as if much surprised, and uttered my name, and 
I cried out : 

"Estella!" 

" I am greatly changed. I wonder you know me." 

The freshness of her beauty was indeed gone, but its indescrib- 
able majesty and its indescribable charm remained. Those attrac- 
tions in it, I had seen before; what I had never seen before, was 
the saddened softened light of the once proud eyes; what I had 
never felt before, was the friendly touch of the once insensible hand. 

We sat down on a bench that was near, and I said, "After so 
many years, it is strange that we should thus meet again, Estella, 
here where our first meeting was ! Do you often come back 1 " 

" I have never been here since." 

" Nor I." 

The moon began to rise, and I thought of the placid look at the 
white ceiling, which had passed away. The moon began to rise, 
and I thought of the pressure on my hand when I had spoken the 
last words he had heard on earth. 

Estella was the next to break the silence that ensued between us. 

" I have very often hoped and intended to come back, but have 
been prevented by many circumstances. Poor, poor old place ! " 

The silvery mist was touched with the first rays of the moon- 
light, and the same rays touched the tears that dropped from her 
eyes. Not knowing that I saw them, and setting herself to get 
the better of them, she said quietly: 



GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 415 

" Were you wondering, as you walked along, how it came to be 
left in this condition 1 " 

" Yes, Estella." 

" The ground belongs to me. It is the only possession I have 
not relinquished. Everything else has gone from me, little by 
little, but I have kept this. It was the subject of the only deter- 
mined resistance I made in all the wretched years." 

" Is it to be built on ? " 

" At last it is. I came here to take leave of it before its change. 
And you," she said, in a voice of touching interest to a wanderer, 
"you live abroad still." 

" Still." 

" And do well, I am sure 1 " 

" I work pretty hard for a sufficient living, and therefore — Yes, 
I do well ! " 

"I have often thought of you," said Estella. 

"Have you?" 

" Of late, veiy often. There was a long hard time when I kept 
far from me, the remembrance of what I had thrown away when I 
was quite ignorant of its worth. But, since my duty has not been 
incompatible with the admission of that remembrance, I have given 
it a place in my heart." 

"You have always held your place in mi/ heart," I answered. 

And we were silent again until she spoke. 

"I little thought," said Estella, "that I should take leave of you 
in taking leave of this spot. I am very glad to do so." 

" Glad to part again, Estella 1 To me, parting is a painful thing. 
To me, the remembrance of our last parting has been ever mournful 
and painful." 

"But you said to me," returned Estella, very earnestly, "'God 
bless you, God forgive you ! ' And if you could say that to me then, 
you will not hesitate to say that to me now — now, when suffering 
has been stronger than all other teaching, and has taught me to 
understand what your heart used to be. I have been bent and 
broken, but — I hope — into a better shape. Be as considerate and 
good to me as you were, and tell me we are friends." 

" We are friends," said I, rising and bending over her, as she rose 
from the bench. 

"And will continue friends apart," said Estella. 

I took her hand in mine, and we went out of the ruined place ; 
and, as the morning mists had risen long ago when I first left the 
forge, so, the evening mists were rising now, and in all the broad 
expanse of tranquil light they showed to me, I saw no shadow of 
another parting from her. 



HARD TIMES. 



yil'[7("'*4!' '! 




MR. SLEART AND HIS DAUGHTER. 



HARD TIMES 



FOR THESE TIMES. 



BY CHARLES DICKENS, 



LONDON: 
BRADBUHY <St EVANS, 11, BOUVEEIE STKEET. 

1854 



HARD TIMES. 

BOOK THE 'FmsT. — SO wijsra. 

CHAPTER I. 

THE ONE THING NEEDFUL. 

"Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls 
nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in hfe. Plant nothing 
else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds 
of reasoning animals upon Facts : nothing else will ever be of any 
service to them. This is the principle on which I bring up my 
own children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these 
children. Stick to Facts, sir ! " 

The scene was a plain, bare, monotonous vault of a schooh'oom, 
and the speaker's square forefinger emphasised his observations by 
underscoring eveiy sentence with a line on the schoolmaster's sleeve. 
The emphasis was helped by the speaker's square wall of a fore- 
head, which had his eyebrows for its base, while his eyes found 
commodious cellarage in two dark caves, overshadowed by the wall. 
The emphasis was helped by the speaker's mouth, which was wide, 
thin, and hard set. The emphasis was helped by the speaker's 
voice, which was inflexible, dry, and dictatorial. The emphasis was 
helped by the speaker's hair, which bristled on the skuts of his 
bald head, a plantation of firs to keep the wind from its shining 
surface, all covered with knobs, like the crust of a plum pie, as if 
the head had scarcely warehouse-room for the hard facts stored 
inside. The speaker's obstinate can-iage, square coat, square legs, 
square shoulders, — nay, his very neckcloth, trained to take him 
by the throat with an unaccommodating grasp, like a stubborn fact, 
as it was, — all helped the emphasis. 

"In this life, we want nothing but Facts, sir; nothing but 
Facts ! " 

421 



422 HARD TIMES. 

The speaker, and the schoolmaster, and the third grown person 
present, all backed a little, and swept with their eyes the inclined 
plane of little vessels then and there arranged in order, ready to 
have imperial gallons of facts poured into them until they were full 
to the brim. 



CHAPTER II. 

MURDEEING THE INNOCENTS. 

Thomas Gradgrind, sir. A man of realities. A man of facts 
and calculations. A man who proceeds upon the principle that two 
and two are four, and nothing over, and who is not to be talked 
into allowing for anything over. Thomas Gradgrind, sir — per- 
emptorily Thomas — Thomas Gradgrind. With a rule and a pair 
of scales, and the multiplication table always in his pocket, sir, 
ready to weigh and measure any parcel of human nature, and tell 
you exactly what it comes to. It is a mere question of figures, a 
case of simple arithmetic. You might hope to get some other non- 
sensical belief into the head of George Gradgrind, or Augustus 
Gradgrind, or John Gradgrind, or Joseph Gradgrind (all supposi- 
tious, non-existent persons), but into the head of Thomas Grad- 
grind — no, sir ! 

In such terms Mr. Gradgrind always mentally introduced him- 
self, whether to his private circle of acquaintance, or to the public 
in general. In such terms, no doubt, substituting the words "boys 
and girls," for "sir," Thomas Gradgrind now presented Thomas 
Gradgrind to the little pitchers before him, who were to be filled 
so full of facts. 

Indeed, as he eagerly sparkled at them from the cellarage before 
mentioned, he seemed a kind of cannon loaded to the muzzle with 
facts, and prepared to blow them clean out of the regions of child- 
hood at one discharge. He seemed a galvanising apparatus, too, 
charged with a grim mechanical substitute for the tender young 
imaginations that were to be stormed away. 

"Girl number twenty," said Mr. Gradgrind, squarely pointing 
with his square forefinger, " I don't know that girl. Who is that 
girl?" 

"Sissy Jupe, sir," explained number twenty, blushing, standing 
up, and curtseying. 

" Sissy is not a name," said Mr. Gradgrind. " Don't call your- 
self Sissy. Call yourself Cecilia." 

"It's father as calls me Sissy, sir," returned the young girl in a 
trembling voice, and with another curtsey. 



I 



HARD TIMES. 423 

" Then lie has no business to do it," said Mr. Gradgrind. " Tell 
him he mustn't. Cecilia Jupe. Let me see. What is your 
father?" 

" He belongs to the horse-riding, if you please, sir." 

Mr. Gradgrind frowned, and waved off the objectionable calling 
with his hand. 

"We don't want to know anything about that, here. You 
mustn't tell us about that, here. Your father breaks horses, don't 
he?" 

" If you please, sir, when they can get any to break, they do 
break horses in the ring, sir." 

" You mustn't tell us about the ring, here. Very well, then. 
Describe your father as a horsebreaker. He doctors sick horses, I 
dare say ? " 

" Oh yes, sir." 

"Very well, then. He is a veterinary surgeon, a farrier, and 
horsebreaker. Give me your definition of a horse." 

(Sissy Jupe thrown into the greatest alarm by this demand.) 

" Girl number twenty unable to define a horse ! " said Mr. Grad- 
grind, for the general behoof of all the little pitchers. "Girl 
number twenty possessed of no facts, in reference to one of the com- 
monest of animals ! Some boy's definition of a horse. Bitzer, 
yours." 

The square finger, moving here and there, lighted suddenly on 
Bitzer, perhaps because he chanced to sit in the same ray of sun- 
light which, darting in at one of the bare windows of the intensely 
whitewashed room, irradiated Sissy. For, the boys and girls sat 
on the face of the inclined plane in two compact bodies, divided 
up the centre by a narrow interval ; and Sissy, being at the comer 
of a row on the sunny side, came in for the beginning of a sun- 
beam, of which Bitzer, being at the corner of a row on the other 
side, a few rows in advance, caught the end. But, whereas the 
girl was so dark-eyed and dark-haired, that she seemed to receive 
a deeper and more lustrous colour from the sun, when it shone 
upon . her, the boy was so light-eyed and light-haired that the self- 
same rays appeared to draw out of him what little colour he ever 
possessed. His cold eyes would hardly have been eyes, but for 
the short ends of lashes which, by bringing them into immediate 
contrast with something paler than themselves, expressed their 
form. His short-cropped hair might liave been a mere continua- 
tion of the sandy freckles on his forehead and face. His skin was 
so unwholesomely deficient in the natural tinge, that he looked as 
though, if it were cut, he would bleed white. 

" Bitzer," said Thomas Gradgrind. " Your definition of a horse." 



424 HARD TIMES. 

" QuadriTped. Graminivorous. Forty teeth, namely twenty- 
four grinders, four eye-teeth, and twelve incisive. Sheds coat in 
the spring; in marshy countries, sheds hoofs, too. Hoofs hard, 
but requiring to be shod with iron. Age known by marks in 
mouth." Thus (and much more) Bitzer. 

"Now girl number twenty," said Mr. G-radgrind. "You know 
what a horse is." 

She curtseyed again, and would have blushed deeper, if she 
could have blushed deeper than she had blushed all this time. 
Bitzer, after rapidly blinking at Thomas Gradgrind with both eyes 
at once, and so catching the light upon his quivering ends of lashes 
that they looked Hke the antennae of busy insects, put his knuckles 
to his freckled forehead, and sat down again. 

The third gentleman now stepped forth. A mighty man at 
cutting and drying, he was ; a government officer ; in his way (and 
in most other people's too), a professed pugilist ; always in train- 
ing, always with a system to force down the general throat like a 
bolus, always to be heard of at the bar of his little Public-office, 
ready to fight all England. To continue in fistic phraseology, he 
had a genius for coming up to the scratch, wherever and whatever 
it was, and proving himself an ugly customer. He would go in 
and damage any subject whatever with his right, follow up with 
his left, stop, exchange, counter, bore his opponent (he always 
fought all England) to the ropes, and fall upon him neatly. He 
was certain to knock the wind out of common sense, and render 
that unlucky adversary deaf to the call of time. And he had it in 
charge from high authority to bring about the great public-office 
Millennium, when Commissioners should reign upon earth. 

" Very well," said this gentleman, briskly smihng, and folding 
his arms. 

" That's a horse. Now, let me ask you girls and boys. Would 
you paper a room with representations of horses 1 " 

After a pause, one half of the children cried in chorus, " Yes, 
sir ! " Upon which the other half, seeing in the gentleman's face 
that Yes was wrong, cried out in chorus, " No, sir ! " — as the cus- 
tom is, in these examinations. 

" Of course, No. Why wouldn't you ? " 

A pause. One corpulent slow boy, with a wheezy manner of 
breathing, ventured the answer, Because he wouldn't paper a room 
at all, but would paint it. 

"You must paper it," said the gentleman, rather warmly. 

"You must paper it," said Thomas Gradgrind, "whether you 
like it or not. Don't tell ^^.s you wouldn't paper it. What do 
you mean, boy ? " 



HARD TIMES. 425 

"I'll explain to you, then," said the gentleman, after another 
and a dismal pause, " why you wouldn't paper a room with repre- 
sentations of horses. Do you ever see horses walking up and down 
the sides of rooms in reality — in fact ? Do you ? " 

" Yes, sir ! " from one half. " No, sir ! " from the other. 

" Of course no," said the gentleman, with an indignant look at 
the wrong half. " Why, then, you are not to see anywhere, what 
you don't see in fact; you are not to have anywhere, what you 
don't have in fact. What is called Taste, is only another name 
for Fact." 

Thomas Gradgrind nodded his approbation. 

"This is a new principle, a discovery, a great discovery," said 
the gentleman. 

" Now, I'll try you again. Suppose you were going to carpet a 
room. Would you use a carpet having a representation of flowers 
upon it ! " 

There being a general conviction by this time that " No, sir ! " 
was always the right answer to this gentleman, the chorus of No 
was very strong. Only a few feeble stragglers said Yes ; among 
them Sissy Jupe. 

"Girl number twenty," said the gentleman, smiling in the calm 
strength of knowledge. 

Sissy blushed, and stood up. 

" So you would carpet your room — or your husband's room, if 
you were a grown woman, and had a husband — with representa- 
tions of flowers, would you," said the gentleman. "Why would 
you ? " 

"If you please, sir, I am very fond of flowers," returned the 
girl. 

" And is that why you would put tables and chairs upon them, 
and have people walking over them with heavy boots 1 " 

" It wouldn't hurt them, sir. They wouldn't crush and wither, 
if you please, sir. They would be the pictures of what was very 
pretty and pleasant, and I would fancy " 

"Ay, ay, ay! But you mustn't fancy," cried the gentleman, 
quite elated by coming so happily to his point. " That's it ! You 
are never to fancy." 

"You are not, Cecilia Jupe," Thomas Gradgrind solemnly 
repeated, "to do anything of that kind." 

" Fact, fact, fact ! " said the gentleman. And " Fact, fact, 
fact ! " repeated Thomas Gradgrind. 

"You are to be in all things regulated and governed," said the 
gentleman, " by fact. We hope to have, before long, a board of fact, 
composed of commissioners of fact, who will force the people to be a 



426 HARD TIMES. 

people of fact, and of nothing but fact. You must discard the word 
Fancy altogether. You have nothing to do with it. You are not 
to have, in any object of use or ornament, what would be a con- 
tradiction in fact. You don't walk upon flowers in fact ; you can- 
not be allowed to walk upon flowers in carpets. You don't find 
that foreign birds and butterflies come and perch upon your crock- 
ery ; you cannot be permitted to paint foreign birds and butterflies 
upon your crockery. You never meet with quadrupeds going 
up and down walls ; you must not have quadrupeds represented 
upon walls. You must use," said the gentleman, "for all these 
purposes, combinations and modifications (in primary colours) of 
mathematical figures which are susceptible of proof and demon- 
stration. This is the new discovery. This is fact. This is taste." 

The girl curtseyed, and sat down. She was very young, and 
she looked as if she were frightened by the matter of fact prospect 
the world aff'orded. 

"Now, if Mr. M'Choakumchild," said the gentleman, "will 
proceed to give his first lesson here, Mr. Gradgrind, I shall be 
happy, at your request, to observe his mode of procedure." 

Mr. Gradgrind was much obliged. " Mr. M'Choakumchild, we 
only wait for you." 

So, Mr. M'Choakumchild began in his best manner. He and 
some one hundred and forty other schoolmasters had been lately 
turned at the same time, in the same factory, on the same princi- 
ples, like so many pianoforte legs. " He had been put through an 
immense variety of paces, and had answered volumes of head- 
breaking questions. Orthography, etymology, syntax, and prosody, 
biography, astronomy, geography, and general cosmography, the 
sciences of compound proportion, algebra, land-surveying and level- 
ling, vocal music, and drawing from models, were all at the ends 
of his ten chilled fingers. He had worked his stony way into Her 
Majesty's most Honourable Privy Council's Schedule B, and had 
taken the bloom off the higher branches of mathematics and physi- 
cal science, French, German, Latin, and Greek. He knew all 
about all the Water Sheds of all the world (whatever they are), 
and all the histories of all the peoples, and all the names of all the 
rivers and mountains, and all the productions, manners, and cus- 
toms of all the countries, and all their boundaries and bearings on 
the two and thirty points of the compass. Ah, rather overdone, 
M'Choakumchild. If he had only learnt a little less, how infi- 
nitely better he might have taught much more ! 

He went to work in this preparatory lesson, not unlike Morgiana 
in the Forty Thieves : looking into all the vessels ranged before 
him, one after another, to see what they contained. Say, good 



HARD TIMES. 427 

M'Choakumchild. When from tliy boiling store, thou shalt fill 
each jar brim full by-and-bye, dost thou think that thou wilt always 
kill outright the robber Fancy lurking within — or sometimes only 
maim him and distort him ! 



CHAPTER III. 

A LOOPHOLE. 

Mr. Gradgrind walked homeward from the school, in a state of 
considerable satisfaction. It was his school, and he intended it 
to be a model. He intended every child in it to be a model — 
just as the young Gradgrinds were all models. 

There were five young Gradgrinds, and they were models every 
one. They had been lectured at, from their tenderest years; 
coursed, like little hares. Almost as soon as they could run alone, 
they had been made to run to the lecture-room. The first object 
with which they had an association, or of which they had a re- 
membrance, was a large black board with a dry Ogre chalking 
ghastly white figures on it. 

Not that they knew, by name or nature, anything about an 
Ogre. Fact forbid ! I only use the word to express a monster 
in a lecturing castle, with Heaven knows how many heads manip- 
ulated into one, taking childhood captive, and dragging it into 
gloomy statistical dens by the hair. 

No little Gradgrind had ever seen a face in the moon ; it was 
up in the moon before it could speak distinctly. No little Grad- 
grind had ever learnt the silly jingle. Twinkle, twinkle little star; 
how I wonder what you are ! No little Gradgrind had ever 
known wonder on the subject, each little Gradgrind having at five 
years old dissected the Great Bear like a Professor Owen, and 
driven Charles's Wain like a locomotive engine-driver. No little 
Gradgrind had ever associated a cow in a field with that famous 
cow with the crumpled horn who tossed the dog who worried the 
cat who killed the rat who ate the malt, or with that yet more 
famous cow who swallowed Tom Thumb : it had never heard of 
those celebrities, and had only been introduced to a cow as a gram- 
inivorous ruminating quadruped with several stomachs. 

To his matter of fact home, which was called Stone Lodge, 
Mr. Gradgrind directed his steps. He had virtually retired from 
the wholesale hardware trade before he built Stone Lodge, and 
was now looking about for a suitable opportunity of making an 
arithmetical figure in Parliament. Stone Lodge was situated on 



428 HARD TIMES. 

a moor within a mile or two of a great town — called Coketown 
in the present faithful guide-book. 

A very regular feature on the face of the countiy, Stone Lodge 
was. Not the least disguise toned down or shaded off that un- 
compromising fact in the landscape. A great square house, with 
a heavy portico darkening the principal ^dndows, as its master's 
heavy brows overshadowed his eyes. A calculated, cast up, bal- 
anced, and proved house. Six windows on this side of the door, 
six on that side ; a total of twelve in this wing, a total of twelve 
in the other wing ; four-and-twenty carried over to the back wings. 
A lawn and garden and an infant avenue, all riiled straight like a 
botanical account-book. Gas and ventilation, drainage and water- 
service, all of the primest quality. Iron clamps and girders, fire- 
proof from top to bottom; mechanical lifts for the housemaids, 
with all their brushes and brooms; everything that heart could 
desire. 

Everything? Well, I suppose so. The little Gradgrinds had 
cabinets in various departments of science too. They had a little 
conchological cabinet, and a little metallurgical cabinet, and a lit- 
tle mineralogical cabinet; and the specimens were all arranged 
and labelled, and the bits of stone and ore looked as though they 
might have been broken from the parent substances by those tre- 
mendously hard instruments their own names ; and, to paraphrase 
the idle legend of Peter Piper, who had never found his way into 
their nursery. If the greedy little Gradgrinds gi^asped at more 
than this, what was it for good gracious goodness' sake, that the 
greedy little Gradgrinds grasped at ! 

Their father walked on in a hopeful and satisfied frame of mind. 
He was an affectionate father, after his manner; but he would 
probably have described himself (if he had been put, like Sissy 
Jupe, upon a definition) as "an eminently practical" father. 
He had a particidar pride in the phrase eminently practical, which 
was considered to have a special application to him. Whatsoever 
the public meeting held in Coketown, and whatsoever the subject 
of such meeting, some Coketowner was sure to seize the occasion 
of alluding to his eminently practical friend Gradgrind. This 
always pleased the eminently practical friend. He knew it to be 
his due, but his due was acceptable. 

He had reached the neutral ground upon the outskirts of the 
town, which was neither town nor country, and yet was either 
spoiled, when his ears were invaded by the sound of music. 
The clashing and banging band attached to the horse-riding estab- 
lishment which had there set up its rest in a wooden pavilion was 
in full bray. A flag, floating from the summit of the temple, pro- 



HARD TIMES. 429 

claimed to mankind that it was " Sleary's Horse-riding " which 
claimed their suffrages. Sleary himself, a stout modern statue 
with a money-box at its elbow, in an ecclesiastical niche of early 
Gothic architecture, took the money. Miss Josephine Sleary, as 
some very long and very narrow strips of printed bill announced, 
was then inaugurating the entertainments with her graceful eques- 
trian Tyrolean flower-act. Among the other pleasing but always 
strictly moral wonders which must be seen to be believed, Signor 
Jupe was that afternoon to "elucidate the diverting accomplish- 
ments of his highly trained performing dog Merry legs." He was 
also to exhibit " his astounding feat of throwing seventy-five hun- 
dred-weight in rapid succession backhanded over his head, thus 
forming a fountain of solid iron in mid-air, a feat never before at- 
tempted in this or any other country, and which having elicited 
such rapturous plaudits from enthusiastic throngs it cannot be 
withdrawn." The same Signor Jupe was to "enliven the varied 
performances at frequent intervals with his chaste Shaksperean 
quips and retorts." Lastly, he was to wind them up by appear- 
ing in his favourite character of Mr. William Button, of Tooley 
Street, in " the highly novel and laughable hippo-comedietta of The 
Tailor's Journey to Brentford." 

Thomas Gradgrind took no heed of these trivialities of course, 
but passed on as a practical man ought to pass on, either brushing 
the noisy insects from his thoughts, or consigning them to the 
House of Correction. But, the turning of the road took him by 
the back of the booth, and at the back of the booth a number of 
children were congregated in a number of stealthy attitudes, striving 
to peep in at the hidden glories of the place. 

This brought him to a stop. " Now, to think of these vaga- 
bonds," said he, "attracting the young rabble from a model school." 

A space of stunted grass and dry rubbish being between him and 
the young rabble, he took his eyeglass out of his waistcoat to look 
for any child he knew by name, and might order off. Phenomenon 
almost incredible though distinctly seen, what did he then behold 
but his own metallurgical Louisa, , peeping with all her might 
through a hole in a deal board, and his own mathematical Thomas 
abasing himself on the ground to catch but a hoof of the graceful 
equestrian Tyrolean flower-act ! 

Dumb with amazement, Mr. Gradgrind crossed to the spot where 
his family was thus disgraced, laid his hand upon each erring child, 
and said : 

" Louisa ! ! Thomas ! ! " 

Both rose, red and disconcerted. But, Louisa looked at her 
father with more boldness than Thomas did. Indeed, Thomas did 



430 HARD TIMES. 

not look at him, but gave himself up to be taken home like a 
machine. 

" In the name of wonder, idleness, and folly ! " said Mr. Grad- 
grind, leading each away by a hand ; " what do you do here ? " 

" Wanted to see what it was like," returned Louisa, shortly. 

"What it was like?" 

"Yes, father." 

There was an air of jaded suUenness in them both, and particularly 
in the girl : yet, struggling through the dissatisfaction of her face, 
there was a light with nothing to rest upon, a fire with nothing to 
burn, a starved imagination keeping life in itself somehow, which 
brightened its expression. Not with the brightness natural to 
cheerful youth, but with uncertain, eager, doubtful flashes, which 
had something painful in them, analogous to the changes on a 
blind face groping its way. 

She was a child now, of fifteen or sixteen ; but at no distant day 
would seem to become a woman all at once. Her father thought 
so as he looked at her. She was pretty. Would have been self- 
willed (he thought in his eminently practical way) but for her 
bringing-up. 

" Thomas, though I have the fact before me, I find it difficult 
to believe that you, with your education and resources, should have 
brought your sister to a scene like this." 

" I brought him, father," said Louisa, quickly. " I asked him to 
come." 

. " I am sorry to hear it. I am very sorry indeed to hear it. It 
makes Thomas no better, and it makes you worse, Louisa." 

She looked at her father again, but no tear fell down her 
cheek. 

"You ! Thomas and you, to whom the circle of the sciences is 
open ; Thomas and you, who may be said to be replete with facts ; 
Thomas and you, who have been trained to mathematical exactness ; 
Thomas and you, here ! " cried Mr. Gradgrind. "In this degraded 
position ! I am amazed." 

"I was tired, father. I have been tired a long time," said 
Louisa. 

" Tired ? Of what ? " asked the astonished father. 

" I don't know of what — of everything I think." 

"Say not another word," returned Mr. Gradgrind. " You are 
childish. I will hear no more." He did not speak again until 
they had walked some half-a-mile in silence, when he gravely broke 
out with : " What would your best friends say, Louisa 1 Do you 
attach no value to their good opinion 1 What would Mr. Bound- 
erby say 1 " 






HARD TIMES. 431 

At the mention of this name, his daughter stole a look at him, 
remarkable for its intense and searching character. He saw nothing 
of it, for before he looked at her, she had again cast down her eyes ! 

"What," he repeated presently, "would Mr. Bounderby say?" 
All the way to Stone Lodge, as with grave indignation he led the 
two delinquents home, he repeated at intervals, " What would Mr. 
Bounderby say ! " — as if Mr. Bounderby had been Mrs. Grundy. 



CHAPTER IV. 

MR. BOUNDERBY. 

Not being Mrs. Grundy, who ivas Mr. Bounderby ? 

Why, Mr. Bounderby was as near being Mr. Gradgrind's bosom 
friend, as a man perfectly devoid of sentiment can approach that 
spiritual relationship towards another man perfectly devoid of 
sentiment. So near was Mr. Bounderby — or, if the reader should 
prefer it, so far off. 

He was a rich man : banker, merchant, manufacturer, and what 
not. A big, loud man, with a stare, and a metallic laugh. A man 
made out of a coarse material, which seemed to have been stretched 
to make so much of him. A man with a great puffed head and 
forehead, swelled veins in his temples, and such a strained skin to 
his face that it seemed to hold his eyes open, and lift his eyebrows 
up. A man with a pervading appearance on him of being inflated 
like a balloon, and ready to start. A man who could never suffi- 
ciently vaunt himself a self-made man. A man who was always 
proclaiming, through that brassy speaking-trumpet of a voice of his, 
his old ignorance and his old poverty. A man who was the Bully 
of humility. 

A year or two younger than his eminently practical friend, Mr. 
Bounderby looked older ; his seven or eight and forty might have 
had the seven or eight added to it again, without surprising any- 
body. He had not much hair. One might have fancied he had 
talked it off; and that what was left, all standing up in disorder, 
was in that condition from being constantly blown about by his 
windy boastfulness. 

In the formal drawing-room of Stone Lodge, standing on the 
hearthrug, warming himself before the fire, Mr. Bounderby deliv- 
ered some observations to Mrs. Gradgrind on the circumstance of 
its being his birthday. He stood before the fire, partly because it 
was a cool spring afternoon, though the sun shone ; partly because 
the shade of Stone Lodge was always haunted by the ghost of damp 



432 HARD TIMES. 

mortar ; partly because he thus took up a commanding position, 
from which to subdue Mrs. Gradgrind. 

"I hadn't a shoe to my foot. As to a stocking, I didn't know- 
such a thing by name. I passed the day in a ditch, and the night 
in a pigsty. That's the way I spent my tenth birthday. Not that 
a ditch was new to me, for I was born in a ditch." 

Mrs. Gradgrind, a little, thin, white, pink-eyed bundle of shawls, 
of surpassing feebleness, mental and bodily; who was always 
taking physic without any effect, and who, whenever she showed a 
symptom of coming to life, was invariably stunned by some weighty 
piece of fact tumbling on her ; Mrs. Gradgrind hoped it was a dry 
ditch ? 

" No ! As wet as a sop. A foot of water in it," said Mr. 
Bounderby. 

" Enough to give a baby cold," Mrs. Gradgrind considered. 

"Cold? I was born with inflammation of the lungs, and of 
everything else, I believe, that was capable of inflammation," 
returned Mr. Bounderby. " For years, ma'am, I was one of the 
most miserable little wretches ever seen. I was so sickly, that I 
was always moaning and groaning. I was so ragged and dirty, 
that you wouldn't have touched me with a pair of tongs." 

Mrs. Gradgrind faintly looked at the tongs, as the most appro- 
priate thing her imbecility could think of doing. 

"How I fought through it, I don't know," said Bounderby. 
" I was determined, I suppose. I have been a determined charac- 
ter in later life, and I suppose I was then. Here I am, Mrs. Grad- 
grind, anyhow, and nobody to thank for my being here, but 
myself" 

Mrs. Gradgrind meekly and weakly hoped that his mother — 

"i¥y mother? Bolted, ma'am !" said Bounderby. 

Mrs. Gradgrind, stunned as usual, collapsed and gave it up. 

"My mother left me to my grandmother," said Bounderby; 
" and, according to the best of my remembrance, my grandmother 
was the wickedest and the worst old woman that ever lived. If 
I got a little pair of shoes by any chance, she would take 'em off 
and sell 'em for drink. Why, I have known that grandmother 
of mine lie in her bed and drink her four-teen glasses of liquor 
before breakfast ! " 

Mrs. Gradgrind, weakly smiling, and giving no other sign of 
vitality, looked (as she always did) like an indifferently exe- 
cuted transparency of a small female figure, without enough light 
behind it. 

"She kept a chandler's shop," pursued Bounderby, " and kept 
me in an egg-box. That was the cot of my infancy ; an old ^gg- 



HARD TIMES. 433 

box. As soon as I was big enough to run away, of course I ran 
away. Then I became a young vagabond ; and instead of one old 
woman knocking me about and starving me, everybody of all ages 
knocked me about and starved me. They were right ; they had 
no business to do anything else, I was a nuisance, an incumbrance, 
and a pest. I know that very well." 

His pride in having at any time of his life achieved such a great 
social distinction as to be a nuisance, an incumbrance, and a pest, 
was only to be satisfied by three sonorous repetitions of the boast. 

" I was to pull through it I suppose, Mrs. Gradgrind. Whether 
I was to do it or not, ma'am, I did it. I pulled through it, 
though nobody threw me out a rope. Vagabond, errand-boy, vaga- 
bond, labourer, porter, clerk, chief manager, small partner, Josiah 
Bounderby of Coketo\vn. Those are the antecedents, and the cul- 
mination. Josiah Bounderby of Coketown learnt his letters from 
the outsides of the shops, Mrs. Gradgrind, and was first able to 
tell the time upon a dial-plate, from studying the steeple clock 
of St. Giles's Church, London, under the direction of a drunken 
cripple, who was a convicted thief, and an incorrigible vagrant. 
Tell Josiah Bounderby of Coketown, of your district schools and 
your model schools, and your training schools, and your whole 
kettle-of-fish of schools ; and Josiah Bounderby of Coketown tells 
you plainly, all right, all correct — he hadn't such advantages — 
but let us have hard-headed, solid-fisted people — the education 
that made him won't do for everybody, he knows well — such and 
such his education was, however, and you may force him to swal- 
low boiling fat, but you shall never force him to suppress the facts 
of his life." 

Being heated when he arrived at this climax, Josiah Bounderby 
of Coketown stopped. He stopped just as his eminently practical 
friend, still accompanied by the two young culprits, entered the 
room. His eminently practical friend, on seeing him, stopped 
also, and gave Louisa a reproachful look that plainly said, " Behold 
your Bounderby ! " 

"Well ! " blustered Mr. Bounderby, "what's the matter ? What 
is young Tliomas in the dumps about 1 " 

He spoke of young Thomas, but he looked at Louisa. 

"We were peeping at the circus," muttered Louisa, haughtily, 
without lifting up her eyes, "and father caught us." 

" And Mrs. Gradgrind," said her husband in a lofty manner, 
" I should as soon have expected to find my children reading 
poetry." 

"Dear me," whimpered Mrs. Gradgrind. "How can you, 
Louisa and Thomas ! I wonder at you. I declare you're enough 



434 HARD TIMES. 

to make one regret ever having had a family at all. I have a 
great mind to say I wish I hadn't. Then what would you have 
done, I should like to know." 

Mr. Gradgrind did not seem favourably impressed by these 
cogent remarks. He frowned impatiently. 

" As if, with my head in its present throbbing state, you 
couldn't go and look at the shells and minerals and things provided 
for you, instead of circuses ! " said Mrs. Gradgrind. " You know, 
as well as I do, no young people have circus masters, or keep cir- 
cuses in cabinets, or attend lectures about circuses. What can you 
possibly want to know of circuses then? I am sure you have 
enough to do, if that's what you want. With my head in its 
present state, I couldn't remember the mere names of half the 
facts you have got to attend to." 

" That's the reason ! " pouted Louisa. 

"Don't tell me that's the reason, because it can be nothing 
of the sort," said Mrs. Gradgrind. "Go and be somethingological 
directly." Mrs. Gradgrind was not a scientific character, and 
usually dismissed her children to their studies with this general 
injunction to choose their pursuit. 

In truth, Mrs. Gradgrind's stock of facts in general was woe- 
fully defective; but Mr. Gradgrind in raising her to her high 
matrimonial position, had been influenced by two reasons. Firstly, 
she was most satisfactory as a question of figures ; and, secondly, 
she had "no nonsense " about her. By nonsense he meant fancy; 
and truly it is probable she was as free from any alloy of tliat nat- 
ure, as any human being not arrived at the perfection of an abso- 
lute idiot, ever was. 

The simple circumstance of being left alone with her husband 
and Mr. Bounderby, was sufficient to stun this admirable lady 
again without collision between herself and any other fact. So, 
she once more died away, and nobody minded her. 

"Bounderby," said Mr. Gradgrind, drawing a chair to the fire- 
side, "you are always so interested in my young people — partic- 
ularly in Louisa — that I make no apology for saying to you, I am 
very much vexed by this discovery. I have systematically devoted 
myself (as you know) to the education of the reason of my family. 
The reason is (as you know) the only faculty to which education 
should be addressed. And yet, Bounderby, it would appear from 
this unexpected circumstance of to-day, though in itself a trifling 
one, as if something had crept into Thomas's and Louisa's minds 
which is — or rather, which is not — I don't know that I can 
express myself better than by saying — which has never been 
intended to be developed, and in which their reason has no part." 



PIARD TIMES. 435 

" There certainly is no reason in looking with interest at a par- 
cel of vagabonds," returned Bcunderby. " When I was a vagabond 
myself, nobody looked with any interest at me; I know that." 

" Then comes the question," said the eminently practical fatlier, 
with his eyes on the fire, " in what has this vulgar curiosity its 
rise?" 

" I'll tell you in what. In idle imagination." 

"I hope not," said the eminently practical; "I confess, how- 
ever, that the misgiving Aas crossed me on my way home." 

"In idle imagination, Gradgrind," repeated Bounderby. " A veiy 
bad thing for anybody, but a cursed bad thing for a girl like Louisa. 
I should ask Mrs. G-radgrind's pardon for strong expressions, but 
that she knows very well I am not a refined character. Whoever 
expects refinement in me will be disappointed. I hadn't a refined 
bringing up." 

"Whether,"' said Mr. Gradgrind, pondering with his hands in 
his pockets, and his cavernous eyes on the fire, " whether any 
instructor or servant can have suggested anything? Whether 
Louisa or Thomas can have been reading anything % Whether, in 
spite of all precautions, any idle storybook can have got into the 
house? Because, in minds that have been practically formed by 
rule and line, from the cradle upwards, this is so curious, so 
incomprehensible. " 

" Stop a bit ! " cried Bounderby, who all this time had been 
standing, as before, on the hearth, bursting at the very furniture 
of the room with explosive humility. "You have one of those 
stroller's children in the school." 

" Cecilia Jupe, by name," said Mr. Gradgrind, with something 
of a stricken look at his friend. 

" Now, stop a bit ! " cried Bounderby again. " How did she 
come there ? " 

" Why, the fact is, I saw the girl myself, for the first time, only 
just now. She specially applied here at the house to be admitted, 
as not regularly belonging to our town, and — yes, you are right, 
Bounderby, you are right." 

" Now, stop a bit ! " cried Bounderby, once more. " Louisa saw 
her when she came ? " 

" Louisa certainly did see her, for she mentioned the application 
to me. But Louisa saw her, I have no doubt, in Mrs. Gradgrind's 
presence." 

"Pray, Mrs. Gradgrind," said Bounderby, "what passed?" 

" Oh, my poor health ! " returned Mrs. Gradgrind. " The girl 
wanted to come to the school, and Mr. Gradgrind wanted girls to 
come to the school, and Louisa and Thomas both said that the girl 



436 HARD TIMES. 

wanted to come, and that Mr. G-radgrind wanted girls to come, 
and how was it possible to contradict them when such was the 
fact ! " 

" Now I tell you what, Gradgrind ! " said Mr. Bounderby. " Turn 
this girl to the right about, and there's an end of it." 

" I am much of your opinion." 

"Do it at once," said Bounderby, "has always been my motto 
from a child. When I thought I would run away from my egg-box 
and my grandmother, I did it at once. Do you the same. Do 
this at once ! " 

"Are you walking?" asked his friend. "I have the father's 
address. Perhaps you would not mind walking to town with me? " 

"Not the least in the world," said Mr. Bounderby, "as long as 
you do it at once ! " 

So, Mr. Bounderby threw on his hat — he always threw it on, 
as expressing a man who had been far too busily employed in 
making himself, to acquire any fashion of wearing his hat — and 
with his hands in his pockets, sauntered out into the hall. " I 
never wear gloves," it was his custom to say. "I didn't climb up 
the ladder in them. Shouldn't be so high up, if I had." 

Being left to saunter in the hall a minute or two while Mr. Grad- 
grind went upstairs for the address, he opened the door of the chil- 
dren's study and looked into that serene floorclothed apartment, 
which, notwithstanding its bookcases and its cabinets and its 
variety of learned and philosophical appliances, had much of the 
genial aspect of a room devoted to haircutting. Louisa languidly 
leaned upon the ^vindow looking out, without looking at anything, 
while young Thomas stood snifl&ng revengefully at the fire. Adam 
Smith and JMalthus, two younger Gradgrinds, were out at lecture in 
custody ; and little Jane, after manufacturing a good deal of moist 
pipe-clay on her face with slate-pencil and tears, had fallen asleep 
over vidgar fractions. 

" It's all right now, Louisa : it's all right, young Thomas," said 
Mr. Bounderby; "you won't do so any more. I'll answer for it's 
being all over with father. Well, Louisa, that's worth a kiss, isn't 
it?" 

"You can take one, Mr. Bounderby," returned Louisa, when she 
had coldly paused, and slowly walked across the room, and ungra- 
ciously raised her cheek towards him, with her face turned away. 

"Always my pet; ain't you, Louisa?" said Mr. Bounderby. 
" Good bye, Louisa ! " 

He went his way, but she stood on the same spot, rubbing the 
cheek he had kissed, with her handkerchief, until it was burning 
red. She was stiU doing this, five minutes afterwards, 



HARD TIMES. 437 

" What are you about, Loo ? " her brother sulkily remonstrated, 
"You'll rub a hole in your face." 

" You may cut the piece out with your penknife if you like, 
Tom. I wouldn't cry ! " 



CHAPTER V. 

THE KEY-NOTE. 

CoKETOWN", to which Messrs. Bounderby and Gradgrind now 
walked, was a triumph of fact ; it had no greater taint of fancy in 
it than Mrs. Gradgrind herself. Let us strike the key-note. Coke- 
town, before pursuing our tune. 

It was a town of red brick, or of brick that would have been red 
if the smoke and ashes had allowed it ; but as matters stood it was 
a town of unnatural red and black like the painted face of a savage. 

It was a town of machinery and tall chimneys, out of which 
interminable serpents of smoke trailed themselves for ever and ever, 
and never got uncoiled. 

It had a black canal in it, and a river that ran purple with ill- 
smelling dye, and vast piles of building full of windows where there 
was a rattling and a trembling all day long, and where the piston 
of the steam-engine worked monotonously up and down, like the 
head of a^ elephant in a state of melancholy madness. It con- 
tained several large streets all very like one another, and many 
small streets still more like one another, inhabited by people equally 
like one another, who all went in and out at the same hours, with 
the same sound upon the same pavements, to do the same work, 
and to whom every day was the same as yesterday and to-morrow, 
and every year the counterpart of the last and the next. 

These attributes of Coketown were in the main inseparable from 
the work by which it was sustained ; against them were to be set 
off, comforts of life which found their way all over the world, and 
elegancies of life 'which made, we will not ask how much of the fine 
lady, who could scarcely bear to hear the place mentioned. The 
rest of its features were voluntary, and they were these. 

You saw nothing in Coketown but what was severely workful. 
If the members of a religious persuasion built a chapel there — 
as the members of eighteen religious persuasions had done — they 
made it a pious warehouse of red brick, with sometimes (but this 
is only in highly ornamented examples) a bell in a birdcage on the 
top of it. The solitary exception was the New Church ; a stuccoed 
edifice with a square steeple over the door, terminating in four 



438 HARD TIMES. 

short pinnacles like florid wooden legs. All the public inscriptions 
in the town were painted alike, in severe characters of black and 
white. The jail might have been the infirmary, the infirmary- 
might have been the jail, the town-hall might have been either, or 
both, or anything else, for anything that appeared to the contrary 
in the graces of their construction. Fact, fact, fact, everywhere in 
the material aspect of the town ; fact, fact, fact, everywhere in the 
immaterial. The M'Choakumchild school was all fact, and the 
school of design was all fact, and the relations between master and 
man were all fact, and everything was fact between the lying-in 
hospital and the cemetery, and what you couldn't state in figures, 
or show to be purchasable in the cheapest market and salable in 
the dearest, was not, and never should be, world without end, 
Amen. 

A town so sacred to fact, and so triumphant in its assertion, of 
course got on well ? Why no, not quite well. No ? Dear me ! 

No. Coketown did not come out of its own furnaces, in all re- 
spects like gold that had stood the fire. First, the perplexing mys- 
tery of the place was. Who belonged to the eighteen denominations ? 
Because, whoever did, the labouring people did not. It was very 
strange to walk through the streets on a Sunday morning, and note 
how few of them the barbarous jangling of bells that was driving 
the sick and nervous mad, called away from their own quarter, 
from their own close rooms, from the corners of their own streets, 
where they lounged listlessly, gazing at all the church and chapel 
going, as at a thing with which they had no manner of concern. 
Nor was it merely the stranger who noticed this, because there was 
a native organisation in Coketown itself, whose members were to 
be heard of in the House of Commons every session, indignantly 
petitioning for acts of parliament that should make these people 
religious by main force. Then came the Teetotal Society, who 
complained that these same people tvould get drunk, and showed 
in tabular statements that they did get drunk, and proved at tea 
parties that no inducement, human or Divine (except a medal), 
would induce them to forego their custom of getting drunk. Then 
came the chemist and druggist, with other tabular statements, 
showing that when they didn't get drunk, they took opium. Then 
came the experienced chaplain of the jail, with more tabular state- 
ments, outdoing all the previous tabular statements, and showing 
that the same people would resort to low haunts, hidden from the 
public eye, where they heard low singing and saw low dancing, and 
mayhap joined in it; and where A. B., aged twenty-four next birth- 
day, and committed for eighteen months' solitary, had himself said 
(not that he had ever shown himself particularly worthy of belief) 



i 



HARD TIMES. 439 

his ruin began, as he was perfectly sure and confident that otherwise 
he would have been a tip-top moral specimen. Then came Mr. 
Gradgrind and Mr. Bounderby, the two gentlemen at this present 
moment walking through Coketown, and both eminently practical, 
who could, on occasion, furnish more tabular statements derived 
from their own personal experience, and illustrated by cases they 
had known and seen, from which it clearly appeared — in short, it 
was the only clear thing in the case — that these same people were 
a bad lot altogether, gentlemen ; that do what you would for them 
they were never thankful for it, gentlemen ; that they were restless, 
gentlemen ; that they never knew what they wanted ; that they 
lived upon the best, and bought fresh butter; and insisted on 
Mocha coffee, and rejected all but prime parts of meat, and yet 
were eternally dissatisfied and unmanageable. In short it was 
the moral of the old nursery fable : 

There was an old woman, and what do you think ? 
She lived upon nothing but victuals and drink ; 
Victuals and drink were the whole of her diet, 
And yet this old woman would never be quiet. 

Is it possible, I wonder, that there was any analogy between the 
case of the Coketown population and the case of the little Grad- 
grinds ? Surely, none of us in our sober senses and acquainted 
with figures, are to be told at this time of day, that one of the fore- 
most elements in the existence of the Coketown working-people had 
been for scores of years, deliberately set at nought ? That there 
was any Fancy in them demanding to be brought into healthy ex- 
istence instead of struggling on in convulsions ? That exactly in 
the ratio as they worked long and monotonously, the craving grew 
within them for some physical relief — some relaxation, encouraging 
good humour and good spirits, and giving them a vent — some recog- 
nised holiday though it were but for an honest dance to a stirring 
band of music — some occasional light pie in which even M'Choak- 
umchild had no finger — which craving must and would be satis- 
fied aright, or must and would inevitably go wrong, until the laws 
of the Creation were repealed ? 

" This man lives at Pod's End, and I don't quite know Pod's 
End," said Mr. Gradgrind. " Which is it, Bounderby 1 " 

Mr. Bounderby knew it was somewhere down town, but knew 
no more respecting it. So they stopped for a moment, looking 
about. 

Almost as they did so, there came running round the corner of 
the street at a quick pace and with a frightened look, a girl whom 
Mr. Gradgrind recognised. " Halloa ! " said he. " Stop ! Where 



440 HARD TIMES. 

are you going ? Stop ! " Girl number twenty stopped then, pal- 
pitating, and made him a curtsey. 

" Why are you tearing about the streets," said Mr. Gradgrind, 
" in this improper manner ? " 

" I was — I was run after, sir," the girl panted, " and I wanted 
to get away." 

" Eun after ? " repeated Mr. Gradgrind. " Who would run after 
you ? " 

The question was unexpectedly and suddenly answered for her, 
by the colourless boy, Bitzer, who came round the corner with such 
blind speed and so little anticipating a stoppage on the pavement, 
that he brought himself up against Mr. Gradgrind's waistcoat and 
rebounded into the road. 

"What do you mean, boy? " said Mr. Gradgrind. " What are 
you doing ? How dare you dash against — everybody — in this 
manner 1 " 

Bitzer picked up his cap, which the concussion had knocked off; 
and backing, and knuckling his forehead, pleaded that it was an 
accident. 

" Was this boy running after you, Jupe ? " asked Mr. Gradgrind. 

"Yes, sir," said the girl reluctantly. 

"No, I wasn't, sir! " cried Bitzer. "Not till she ran away from 
me. But the horse-riders never mind what they say, sir ; they're 
famous for it. You know the horse-riders are famous for never 
minding what they say," addressing Sissy. "It's as well known in 
the town as — please, sir, as the multiplication table isn't known to 
the horse-riders." Bitzer tried Mr. Bounderby with this. 

" He frightened me so," said the girl, "with his cruel faces ! " 

" Oh ! " cried Bitzer. " Oh ! An't you one of the rest ! An't 
you a horse-rider ! I never looked at her, sir. I asked her if she 
would know how to define a horse to-morrow, and offered to tell her 
again, and she ran away, and I ran after her, sir, that she might 
know how to answer when she was asked. You wouldn't have 
thought of saying such mischief if you hadn't been a horse-rider ! " 

" Her calling seems to be pretty well known among 'em," ob- 
served Mr. Bounderby. " You'd have had the whole school peep- 
ing in a row, in a week." 

"Truly, I think so," returned his friend. "Bitzer, turn you 
about and take yourself home. Jupe, stay here a moment. Let 
me hear of your running in this manner any more, boy, and you will 
hear of me through the master of the school. You understand 
what I mean. Go along." 

The boy stopped in his rapid blinking, knuckled his forehead 
again, glanced at Sissy, turned about, and retreated. 



HAKD TIMES. 441 

"Now, girl," said Mr. Gradgrind, "take this gentleman and me 
to your fatlier's ; we are going there. What have you got in that 
bottle you are carrying 1 " 

" Gin," said Mr. Bounderby. 

" Dear, no, sir ! It's the nine oils." 

" The what ? " cried Mr. Bounderby. 

" The nine oils, sir. To rub father with." Then said Mr. Boun- 
derby, with aloud short laugh, "What the devil do you rub your 
father with nine oils for 1 " 

" It's what our people always use, sir, when they get any hurts 
in the ring," replied the girl, looking over her shoulder, to assure 
herself that her pursuer was gone. " They bruise themselves very 
bad sometimes." 

"Serve 'em right," said Mr. Bounderby, "for being idle." She 
glanced up at his face, with mingled astonishment and dread. 

" By George ! " said Mr. Bounderby, " when I was four or five 
years younger than you, I had worse bruises upon me than ten oils, 
twenty oils, forty oils, would have rubbed off. I didn't get 'em 
by posture-making, but by being banged about. There was no 
rope-dancing for me ; I danced on the bare ground and was lar- 
ruped with the rope." 

Mr. Gradgrind, though hard enough, was by no means so rough 
a man as Mr. Bounderby. His character was not unkind, all 
things considered ; it might have been a very kind one indeed, if 
he had only made some round mistake in the arithmetic that bal- 
anced it, years ago. He said, in what he meant for a reassuring 
tone, as they turned down a narrow road, " And this is Pod's End ; 
is it, Jupe ? " 

"This is it, sir, and — if you wouldn't mind, sir — this is the 
house." 

She stopped, at twilight, at the door of a mean little public- 
house, with dim red lights in it. As haggard and as shabby, as if, 
for want of custom, it had itself taken to drinking, and had gone 
the way all drunkards go, and was very near the end of it. 

" It's only crossing the bar, sir, and up the stairs, if you wouldn't 
mind, and waiting there for a moment till I get a candle. If you 
should hear a dog, sir, it's only Merrylegs, and he only barks," 

" Merrylegs and nine oils, eh ! " said Mr. Bounderby, entering 
last with his metallic laugh. " Pretty well this, for a self-made 
man ! " 



442 HAKD TIMES. 

CHAPTER VI. 

sleary's horsemanship. 

The name of the public-house was the Pegasus's Arms. The 
Pegasus's legs might have been more to the purpose ; but, under- 
neath the winged horse upon the signboard, the Pegasus's Arms was 
inscribed in Roman letters. Beneath that inscription again, in a 
flowing scroll, the painter had touched ofl' the lines : 

Good malt makes good beer, 
Walk in, and they'll draw it here ; 
Good wine makes good brandy, 
Give us a call, and you'll find it handy. 

Framed and glazed upon the wall behind the dingy little bar, 
was another Pegasus — a theatrical one — with real gauze let in 
for his wings, golden stars stuck on all over him, and his ethereal 
harness made of red silk. 

As it had grown too dusky without, to see the sign, and as it 
had not grown light enough within to see the picture, Mr. Grad- 
grind and Mr. Bounderby received no offence from these idealities. 
They followed the girl up some steep corner-stairs without meeting 
any one, and stopped in the dark while she went on for a candle. 
They expected every moment to hear Merrylegs give tongue, but 
the highly trained performing dog had not barked when the girl 
and the candle appeared together. 

"Father is not in our room, sir," she said, with a face of great 
surprise. "If you wouldn't mind walking in, I'll find him di- 
rectly." 

They walked in ; and Sissy, having set two chairs for them, sped 
away with a quick light step. It was a mean, shabbily furnished 
room, with a bed in it. The white night-cap, embellished with 
two peacock's feathers and a pigtail bolt upright, in which Signor 
Jupe had that very afternoon enlivened the varied performances 
with his chaste Shaksperian quips and retorts, hung upon a nail ; 
but no other portion of his wardrobe, or other token of himself or 
his pursuits, was to be seen anywhere. As to Merrylegs, that 
respectable ancestor of the highly trained animal who went aboard 
the ark, might have been accidentally shut out of it, for any sign 
of a dog that was manifest to eye or ear in the Pegasus's Arms. 

They heard the doors of rooms above, opening and shutting as 
Sissy went from one to another in quest of her father ; and pres- 
ently they heard voices expressing surprise. She came bounding 
down again in a great hurry, opened a battered and mangy old hair 



444 HARD TIMES. 

trunk, found it empty, and looked round with lier hands clasped 
and her face full of terror. 

" Father must have gone down to the Booth, sir. I don't know 
why he should go there, but he must be there ; I'll bring him in a 
minute ! " She was gone directly, ^vithout her bonnet ; with her 
long, dark, childish hair streaming behind her. 

" What does she mean ! " said Mr. Gradgrind. " Back in a 
minute? It's more than a mile oflp." 

Before Mr. Bounderby could reply, a young man appeared at the 
door, and introducing himself with the words, "By your leaves, 
gentlemen ! " walked in with his hands in his pockets. His face, 
close-shaven, thin, and sallow, was shaded by a great quantity of 
dark hair, brushed into a roll all round his head, and parted up 
the centre. His legs were very robust, but shorter than legs of 
good proportions should have been. His chest and back were as 
much too broad, as his legs were too short. He was dressed in a 
Newmarket coat and tight-fitting trousers; wore a shawl round 
his neck ; smelt of lamp-oil, straw, orange-peel, horses' provender, 
and sawdust ; and looked a most remarkable sort of Centaur, com- 
pounded of the stable and the play-house. Where the one began, 
and the other ended, nobody could have told with any precision. 
This gentleman was mentioned in the bills of the day as Mr. E. 
W. B. Childers, so justly celebrated for his daring vaulting act as 
the Wild Huntsman of the North American Prairies; in which 
popular performance, a diminutive boy with an old face, who now 
accompanied him, assisted as his infant son : being carried upside 
down over his father's shoulder, by one foot, and held by the crown 
of his head, heels upwards, in the palm of his father's hand, accord- 
ing to the violent paternal manner in which wild huntsmen may be 
observed to fondle their offspring. Made up with curls, wreaths, 
wings, white bismuth, and carmine, this hopeful young person 
soared into so pleasing a Cupid as to constitute the chief delight 
of the maternal part of the spectators ; but in private, where his » 
characteristics were a precocious cutaway coat and an extremely 
gruff voice, he became of the Turf, turfy. 

" By your leaves, gentlemen," said Mr. E. W. B. Childers, glanc- 
ing round the room. " It was you, I believe, that were wishing to 
see Jupe ! " 

" It was," said Mr, Gradgrind. " His daughter has gone to fetch 
him, but I can't wait ; therefore, if you please, I will leave a mes- 
sage for him with you." 

"You see, my friend," Mr. Bounderby put in, "we are the kind 
of people who know the value of time, and you are the kind of 
people who don't know the value of time." 



HARD TIMES. 445 

"I have not," retorted Mr. Childers, after surveying him from 
head to foot, " the honour of knowing you^ — but if you mean that 
you can make more money of your time than I can of mine, I 
should judge from your appearance, that you are about right." 

"And when you have made it, you can keep it too, I should 
think," said Cupid. 

" Kidderminster, stow that ! " said Mr. Childers. (Master Kid- 
derminster was Cupid's mortal name.) 

" What does he come here cheeking us for, then % " cried Master 
Kidderminster, showing a very irascible temperament. "If you 
want to cheek us, pay your ochre at the doors and take it out." 

"Kidderminster," said Mr. Childers, raising his voice, "stow 
that ! — Sir," to Mr. Gradgrind, "I was addressing myself to you. 
You may or you may not be aware (for perhaps you have not been 
much in the audience), that Jupe has missed his tip very often, 
lately." 

" Has — what has he missed % " asked Mr. Gradgrind, glancing 
at the potent Bounderby for assistance. 

" Missed his tip." 

" Offered at the Garters four times last night, and never done 
'em once," said Master Kidderminster. "Missed his tip at the 
banners, too, and was loose in his ponging." 

" Didn't do what he ought to do. Was short in his leaps and 
bad in his tumbling," Mr. Childers interpreted. 

" Oh ! " said Mr. Gradgrind, " that is tip, is it % " 

" In a general way that's missing his tip," Mr. E. W. B. Childers 
answered. 

" Nine oils, Merrylegs, missing tips, garters, banners, and Pong- 
ing, eh ! " ejaculated Bounderby, with his laugh of laughs. " Queer 
sort of company, too, for a man who has raised himself." 

"Lower yourself, then," retorted Cupid. "Oh Lord! if you've 
raised yourself so high as all that comes to, let yourself down a bit." 

" This is a veiy obtrusive lad! " said Mr. Gradgrind, turning, and 
knitting his brows on him. 

"We'd have had a young gentleman to meet you, if we had 
known you were coming," retorted Master Kidderminster, nothing 
abashed. " It's a pity you don't have a bespeak, being so particu- 
lar. You're on the Tight- Jeff, ain't you? " 

"What does this unmannerly boy mean," asked Mr. Gradgrind, 
eyeing him in a sort of desperation, "by Tight-Jeff?" 

" There ! Get out, get out 1 " said Mr. Childers, thrusting his 
young friend from the room, rather in the prairie manner. " Tight- 
Jeff or Slack-Jeff, it don't much signify : it's only tight-rope and 
slack-rope. You were going to give me a message for Jupe ? " 



446 HARD TIMES. 

" Yes, I was." 

"Then," continued Mr. Childers, quickly, "my opinion is, he 
will never receive it. Do you know much of him 1 " 

" I never saw the man in my life." 

" I doubt if you ever will see him now. It's pretty plain to me, 
he's off." 

"Do you mean that he has deserted his daughter?" 

"Ay! I mean," said Mr. Childers, with a nod, "that he has cut. 
He was goosed last night, he was goosed the night before last, he 
was goosed to-day. He has lately got in the way of being always 
goosed, and he can't stand it." 

"Why has he been — so very much — Goosed?" asked Mr. 
Gradgrind, forcing the word out of himself, with great solemnity 
and reluctance. 

" His joints are turning stiff, and he is getting used up," said 
Childers. " He has his points as a Cackler still, but he can't get 
a living out of them." 

" A Cackler ! " Bounderby repeated. " Here we go again ! " 

"A speaker, if the gentleman likes it better," said Mr. E. W. 
B. Childers, superciliously throwing the interpretation over his 
shoulder, and accompanying it with a shake of his long hair — 
which all shook at once. " Now, it's a remarkable fact, sir, that 
it cut that man deeper, to know that his daughter knew of his being 
goosed, than to go through with it." 

"Good!" interrupted Mr. Bounderby. "This is good, Grad- 
grind ! A man so fond of his daughter, that he runs away from 
her ! This is devilish good ! Ha ! ha ! Now, I'll tell you what, 
young man. I haven't always occupied my present station of life. 
I know what these things are. You may be astonished to hear it, 
but my mother ran away from me." 

E. W. B. Childers replied pointedly, that he was not at all aston- 
ished to hear it, 

" Very well," said Bounderby. " I was born in a ditch, and my 
mother ran away from me. Do I excuse her for it ? No. Have I 
ever excused her for it ? Not I. What do I call her for it ? I call 
her probably the very worst woman that ever lived in the world, ex- 
cept my drunken grandmother. There's no family j^ride about me, 
there's no imaginative sentimental humbug about me. I call a spade 
a spade ; and I call the mother of Josiah Bounderby of Coketown, 
without any fear or any favour, what I should call her if she had been 
the mother of Dick Jones of Wapping. So, with this man. He is a 
runaway rogue and a vagabond, that's what he is, in English." 

" It's all the same to me what he is or what he is not, whether 
in English or whether in French," retorted Mr. E. W. B. Childers, 



HARD TIMES. 447 

facing about. " I am telling your friend what's the fact ; if you 
don't like to hear it, you- can avail yourself of the open air. You 
give it mouth enough, you do ; but give it mouth in your own 
building at least," remonstrated E. W. B, with stern irony. "Don't 
give it mouth in this building, till you're called upon. You have 
got some building of your own, I dare say, now ? " 

"Perhaps so," replied Mr. Bounderby, rattling his money and 
laughing. 

" Then give it mouth in your own building, will you, if you 
please ! " said Childers. "Because this isn't a strong building, and 
too much of you might bring it down ! " 

Eyeing Mr. Bounderby from head to foot again, he turned from 
him, as from a man finally disposed of, to Mr. Gradgrind. 

" Jupe sent his daughter out on an errand not an hour ago, and 
then was seen to slip out himself, with his hat over his eyes, and a 
bundle tied up in a handkerchief under his arm. She will never 
believe it of him but he has cut away and left her." 

"Pray," said Mr. Gradgrind, "why will she never believe it of 
him?" 

" Because those two were one. Because they were never asun- 
der. Because, up to this time, he seemed to dote upon her," said 
Childers, taking a step or two to look into the empty tnink. Both 
Mr. Childers and Master Kidderminster walked in a curious man- 
ner; with their legs wider apart than the general run of men, and 
with a very knowing assumption of being stiff in the knees. This 
walk was common to all the male members of Sleary's company, 
and was understood to express, that they were always on horseback. 

"Poor Sissy ! He had better have apprenticed her," said Childers, 
giving his hair another shake, as he looked up from the empty 
box. " Now, he leaves her without anything to take to." 

"It is creditable to you, who have never been apprenticed, to 
express that opinion," returned Mr. Gradgrind, approvingly. 

" / never apprenticed ? I was apprenticed when I was seven 
year old." 

"Oh! Indeed?" said Mr. Gradgrind, rather resentfully, as hav- 
ing been defrauded of his good opinion. " I was not aware of its 
being the custom to apprentice young persons to " 

"Idleness," Mr. Bounderby put in with a loud laugh. "No, by 
the Lord Harry ! Nor I ! " 

" Her father always had it in his head," resumed Childers, feign- 
ing unconsciousness of Mr. Bounderby 's existence, "that she was 
to be taught the deuce-and-all of education. How it got into his 
head, I can't say ; I can only say that it never got out. He has 
been picking up a bit of reading for her, here — and a bit of writ- 



448 HARD TIMES. 

ing for her, there — and a bit of cipheiing for her, somewhere else 
— these seven years." 

Mr. E. W. B. Childers took one of his hands out of his pockets, 
stroked his face and chin, and looked, with a good deal of doubt 
and a little hope, at Mr. Gradgrind. From the first he had sought 
to conciliate that gentleman, for the sake of the deserted girl. 

" When Sissy got into the school here," he pursued, " her father 
was as pleased as Punch. I couldn't altogether make out why, 
myself, as we were not stationary here, being but comers and goers 
anywhere. I suppose, however, he had this move in his mind — 
he was always half-cracked — and then considered her provided for. 
If you should happen to have looked in to-night, for the purpose of 
telling him that you were going to do her any little service," said 
Mr. Childers, stroking his face again, and repeating his look, "it 
would be very fortunate and well-timed ; very fortunate and well- 
timed." 

" On the contrary," returned Mr. Gradgrind. " I came to tell 
him that her connections made her not an object for the school, and 
that she must not attend any more. Still, if her father really has 
left her, without any connivance on her part — Bounderby, let me 
have a word with you." 

Upon this, Mr. Childers politely betook himself, with his eques- 
trian walk, to the landing outside the door, and there stood stroking 
his face, and softly whistling. While thus engaged, he overheard 
such phrases in Mr. Bounderby 's voice as "No. / say no. I 
advise you not. I say by no means." While, from Mr. Gradgrind, 
he heard in his much lower tone the words, " But even as an exam- 
ple to Louisa, of what this pursuit which has been the subject of a 
vulgar curiosity, leads to and ends in. Think of it, Bounderby, in 
that point of view." 

Meanwhile, the various members of Sleary's company gradually 
gathered together from the upper regions, where they were quartered, 
and, from standing about, talking in low voices to one another and 
to Mr. Childers, gradually insinuated themselves and him into the 
room. There were two or three handsome young women among 
them, with their two or three husbands, and their two or three 
mothers, and their eight or nine little children, who did the fairy 
business when required. The father of one of the families was in 
the habit of balancing the father of another of the families on the 
top of a great pole ; the father of a third family often made a pyr- 
amid of both those fathers, with Master Kidderminster for the 
apex, and himself for the base ; all the fathers could dance upon 
rolling casks, stand upon bottles, catch knives and balls, twirl hand- 
basins, ride upon anything, jump over everything, and stick at 



HARD TIMES. 449 

nothing. All the mothers could (and did) dance, upon the slack 
wire and the tight rope, and perform rapid acts on bare-backed 
steeds ; none of them were at all particular in respect of showing 
their legs ; and one of them, alone in a Greek chariot, drove six in 
hand into every to^vn they came to. They all assumed to be mighty 
rakish and knowing, they were not very tidy in their private dresses, 
they were not at all orderly in their domestic arrangements, and the 
combined literature of the whole company would have produced but 
a poor letter on any subject. Yet there was a remarkable gentle- 
ness and childishness about these people, a special inaptitude for 
any kind of sharp practice, and an untiring readiness to help and 
pity one another, deserving often of as much respect, and always 
of as much generous construction, as the every-day virtues of any 
class of people in the world. 

Last of all appeared Mr. Sleary: a stout man as already men- 
tioned, with one fixed eye, and one loose eye, a voice (if it can be 
called so) like the efforts of a broken old pair of bellows, a flabby 
surface, and a muddled head which was never sober and never drunk. 

" Thquire ! " said Mr. Sleary, who was troubled with asthma, and 
whose breath came far too thick and heavy for the letter s, " Your 
thervant ! Thith ith a bad piethe of bithnith, thith ith. You've 
heard of my Clown and hith dog being thuppothed to have 
morrithed ? " 

He addressed Mr. G-radgrind, who answered "Yes." 

" Well, Thquire," he returned, taking off his hat, and rubbing 
the lining with his pocket-handkerchief, which he kept inside for the 
purpose. " Ith it your intenthion to do anything for the poor girl, 
Thquire 1 " 

" I shall have something to propose to her when she comes back," 
said Mr. Gradgrind. 

" Glad to hear it, Thquire. Not that I want to get rid of the 
child, any more than I want to thtand in her way. I'm willing to 
take her prentith, though at her age ith late. My voithe ith a little 
huthky, Thquire, and not eathy heard by them ath don't know me ; 
but if you'd been chilled and heated, heated and chilled, chilled and 
heated in the ring when you wath young, ath often ath I have been, 
7/our voithe wouldn't have lathted out, Thquire, no more than mine." 

" I dare say not," said Mr. Gradgrind. 

" What thall it be, Thquire, while you wait 1 Thall it be Therry 1 
Give it a name, Thquire ! " said Mr. Sleary, with hospitable ease. 

"Nothing for me, I thank you," said Mr. Gradgrind. 

"Don't thay nothing, Thquire. What doth your friend thayl 
If you haven't took your feed yet, have a glath of bitterth." 

Here his daughter Josephine — a pretty fair-haired girl of eigh- 



450 HARD TIMES. 

teen, who had been tied on a horse at two years old, and had made 
a will at twelve, which she always carried about with her, expres- 
sive of her dying desu'e to be drawn to the grave by the two i^iebald 
ponies — ^ cried, "Father, hush ! she has come back ! " Then came 
Sissy Jupe, running into the room as she had run out of it. And 
when she saw them all assembled, and saw their looks, and saw no 
father there, she broke into a most deplorable cry, and took refuge 
on the bosom of the most accomplished tight-rope lady (herself in 
the family-way), who knelt down on the floor to nurse her, and to 
weep over her. 

"Ith an infernal thame, upon my soul it ith," said Sleaiy. 

" my dear father, my good kind father, where are you gone ? 
You are gone to try to do me some good, I know ! You are gone 
away for my sake, I am sure ! And how miserable *and helpless 
you will be without me, poor, poor father, until you come back ! " 
It was so pathetic to hear her saying many things of this kind, 
with her face turned upward, and her arms stretched out as if she 
were trying to stop his departing shadow and embrace it, that no 
one spoke a word until Mr. Bounderby (growing impatient) took 
the case in hand. 

"Now, good people all," said he, "this is wanton waste of time. 
Let the girl understand the fact. Let her take it from me, if you 
like, who have been run away from myself. Here, what's your 
name ! Your father has absconded — deserted you — and you 
mustn't expect to see him again as long as you live." 

They cared so little for plain Fact, these people, and were in that 
advanced state of degeneracy on the subject, that instead of being 
impressed by the speaker's strong common sense, they took it in 
extraordinary dudgeon. The men muttered " Shame ! " and the 
women "Brute!" and Sleary, in some haste, communicated the 
following hint, apart to Mr. Bounderby. 

" I tell you what, Thquire. To thpeak plain to you, my opinion 
ith that you had better cut it thort, and drop it. They're a very 
good natur'd people, my people, but they're accuthtomed to be quick 
in their movementh ; and if you don't act upon my advithe, I'm 
damned if I don't believe they'll pith you out o' winder." 

Mr. Bounderby being restrained by this mild suggestion, Mr. 
Gradgrind found an opening for his eminently practical exposition 
of the subject. 

"It is of no moment," said he, "whether this person is to be 
expected back at any time, or the contrary. He is gone away, 
and there is no present expectation of his return. That, I believe, 
is agreed on all hands." 

" Thath agreed, Thquire. Thick to that ! " From Sleary. 



HARD TIMES. 451 

"Well then. I, who came here to inform the father of the 
poor girl, Jupe, that she could not be received at the school any 
more, in consequence of there being practical objections, into 
which I need not enter, to the reception there of the children of 
persons so employed, am prepared in these altered circum- 
stances to make a proposal. I am willing to take charge of you, 
Jupe, and to educate you, and provide for you. The only con- 
dition (over and above your good behaviour) I make is, that you 
decide now, at once, whether to accompany me or remain here. 
Also, that if you accompany me now, it is understood that you 
communicate no more with any of your friends who are here pres- 
ent. These observations comprise the whole of the case." 

"At the thame time," said Sleary, " I mutht put in my word, 
Thquire, tho that both thides of the banner may be equally theen. 
If you like, Thethilia, to be prentitht, you know the natur of the 
work and you know your companionth. Emma Gordon, in whothe 
lap you're a lying at prethent, would be a mother to you, and 
Joth'phine would be a thithter to you. I don't pretend to be of 
the angel breed mythelf, and I don't thay but what, when you 
mith'd your tip, you'd find me cut up rougli, and thwear an oath 
or two at you. But what I thay, Thquire, ith, that good tem- 
pered or bad tempered, I never did a horthe a injury yet, no 
more than thwearing at him went, and that I don't expect I thall 
begin otherwithe at my time of life, with a rider. I never wath 
much of a Cackler, Thquire, and I have thed my thay." 

T]ie latter part of this speech was addressed to Mr. Gradgrind, 
who received it with a grave inclination of his head, and then 
remarked : 

"The only observation I will make to you, Jupe, in the way 
of influencing your decision, is, that it is highly desirable to have 
a sound practical education, and that even your father himself 
(from what I understand) appears, on your behalf, to have known 
and felt that much." 

The last words had a visible efiect upon her. She stopped in 
her wild crying, a little detached herself from Emma Gordon, and 
turned her face full upon her patron. The whole company per- 
ceived the force of the change, and drew a long breath together, 
that plainly said, "she will go ! " 

"Be sure you know your own mind, Jupe," Mr. Gradgrind cau- 
tioned her ; " I say no more. Be sure you know your own mind ! " 

"When father comes back," cried the girl, bursting into tears 
again after a minute's silence, " how will he ever find me if I go 
away ! " 

"You may be quite at ease," said Mr. Gradgrind, calmly; he 



452 HAED TIMES. 

worked out the whole matter like a sum : " you may be quite at ease, 
Jupe, on that score. In such a case, your father, I apprehend, 
must find out Mr. " 

" Tlileaiy. Thath my name, Thquire. Not athamed of it. 
Known all over England, and alwayth paythe ith way." 

"Must find out Mr. Sleary, who would then let him know 
where you went. I should have no power of keeping you against 
his wish, and he would have no difficulty, at any time, in finding 
Mr. Thomas Gradgrind of Coketown. I am well known." 

"Well known," assented Mr. Sleary, rolling his loose eye. 
" You're one of the thort, Thquire, that keepth a prethiouth thight 
of money out of the houthe. But never mind that at prethent." 

There was another silence; and then she exclaimed, sobbing 
with her hands before her face, " Oh give me my clothes, give me 
my clothes, and let me go away before I break my heart ! " 

The women sadly bestirred themselves to get the clothes together 
— it was soon done, for they were not many — and to pack them 
in. a basket which had often travelled with them. Sissy sat all 
the time, upon the ground, still sobbing, and covering her eyes. 
Mr. Gradgrind and his friend Bounderby stood near the door, 
ready to take her away. Mr. Sleaiy stood in the middle of the 
room, Avith the male members of the company about him, exactly 
as he would have stood in the centre of the ring during his daughter 
Josephine's performance. He wanted nothing but his whip. 

The basket packed in silence, they brought her bonnet to her, 
and smoothed her disordered hair, and put it on. Then they 
pressed about her, and bent over her in very natural attitudes, 
kissing and embracing her : and brought the children to take 
leave of her; and were a tender-hearted, simple, foolish set of 
women altogether. 

' ' Now, Jupe, " said Mr. Gradgrind. ' ' If you are quite determined, 
come ! " 

But she had to take her farewell of the male part of the com- 
pany yet, and every one of them had to unfold his arms (for they 
all assumed the professional attitude when they found themselves 
near Sleary), and give her a parting kiss — Master Kidderminster 
excepted, in whose young nature there was an original flavour of 
the misanthrope, who was also known to have harboured matrimo- 
nial views, and who moodily withdrew. Mr. Sleary was reserved 
until the last. Opening his arms wide he took her by both her 
hands, and would have sprung her up and down, after the riding- 
master manner of congratulating young ladies on their dismounting 
from a rapid act ; but there was no rebound in Sissy, and she only 
stood before him crying. 



HARD TIMES. 453 

"Good bye, my dear !" said Sleary. "You'll make your fortun, 
I hope, and none of our poor folkth will ever trouble you, I'll 
pound it. I with your father hadn't taken hith dog with him ; 
ith a ill-con wenienth to have the dog out of the billth. But on 
thecond thoughth, he wouldn't have performed without hith math- 
ter, tho ith ath broad ath ith long ! " 

With that he regarded her attentively with his fixed eye, sur- 
veyed his company with his loose one, kissed her, shook his head, 
and handed her to Mr. Gradgrind as to a horse. 

" There the ith, Thquire," he said, sweeping her with a profes- 
sional glance as if she were being adjusted in her seat, " and the'll 
do you juth tithe. Good bye, Thethilia ! " 

" Good bye, Ceciha ! " " Good bye. Sissy ! " " God bless you, 
dear ! " In a variety of voices from all the room. 

But the riding-master eye had observed the bottle of the nine oils 
in her bosom, and he now interposed with "Leave the bottle, my 
dear ; ith large to carry ; it will be of no uthe to you now. Give 
it to me ! " 

" No, no ! " she said, in another burst of tears. " Oh, no ! 
Pray let me keep it for father till he comes back ! He will want 
it when he comes back. He had never thought of going away, 
when he sent me for it. I must keep it for him, if you please ! " 

" Tho be it, my dear. (You thee how it ith, Thquire ! ) Fare- 
well, Thethilia ! My latht wordth to you ith thith, Thtick to the 
termth of your engagement, be obedient to the Thquire, and forget 
uth. But if, when you're grown up and married and well off, you 
come upon any horthe-riding ever, don't be hard upon it, don't be 
croth with it, give it a Bethpeak if you can, and think you might 
do wurth. People must be amuthed, Thquire, somehow," contin- 
ued Sleary, rendered more pursy than ever, by so much talking ; 
" they can't be alwayth a working, nor yet they can't be alwayth a 
learning. Make the betht of uth ; not the wurtht. I've got my 
living out of the horthe-riding all my life, I know ; but I conthider 
that I lay down the philothophy of the thubject when I thay to 
you, Thquire, make the betht of uth : not the wurtht ! " 

The Sleary philosophy was propounded as they went downstairs ; 
and the fixed eye of Philosophy — and its rolling eye, too — soon 
lost the three figures and the basket in the darkness of the street. 



454 HARD TIMES. 

CHAPTER VII. 

MKS. SPARSIT. 

Mr. Bounderby being a bachelor, an elderly lady presided 
over his establishment, in consideration of a certain annual stipend. 
Mrs. Sparsit was this lady's name ; and she was a prominent figure 
in attendance on Mr. Bounderby's car, as it rolled along in triumph 
with the Bully of humility inside. 

For, Mrs. Sparsit had not only seen different days, but was highly 
connected. She had a great aunt living in these very times called 
Lady Scadgers. Mr. Sparsit, deceased, of whom she was the relict, 
had been by the mother's side what Mrs. Sparsit still called " a Fow- 
ler." Strangers of limited information and dull apprehension were 
sometimes observed not to know what a Fowler was, and even to 
appear uncertain whether it might be a business, or a political party, 
or a profession of faith. The better class of minds, however, did not 
need to be informed that the Fowlers were an ancient stock, who 
could trace themselves so exceedingly far back that it was not sur- 
prising if they sometimes lost themselves — which they had rather 
frequently done, as respected horse-flesh, blind-hookey, Hebrew mone- 
tary transactions, and the Insolvent Debtors Court. 

The late Mr. Sparsit, being by the mother's side a Fowler, mar- 
ried this lady, being by the father's side a Scadgers. Lady Scad- 
gers (an immensely fat old woman, with an inordinate appetite for 
butchers' meat, and a mysterious leg which had now refused to get 
out of bed for fourteen years) contrived the marriage, at a period 
when Sparsit was just of age, and chiefly noticeable for a slender 
body, weakly supported on two long slim props, and surmounted 
by no head worth mentioning. He inherited a fair fortune from his 
uncle, but owed it all before he came into it, and spent it twice over 
immediately afterwards. Thus, when he died, at twenty-four (the 
scene of his decease, Calais, and the cause, brandy), he did not leave 
his widow, from whom he had been separated soon after the honey- 
moon, in affluent circumstances. That bereaved lady, fifteen years 
older than he, fell presently at deadly feud with her only relative. 
Lady Scadgers; and, partly to spite her ladyship, and partly to 
maintain herself, went out at a salary. And here she was now, in 
her elderly days, with the Coriolanian style of nose and the dense 
black eyebrows which had captivated Sparsit, making Mr. Boun- 
derby's tea as he took his breakfast. 

If Bounderby had been a Conqueror, and Mrs. Sparsit a captive 
Frincess whom he took about as a feature in his state-processions, he 
could not have made a greater flourish with her than he habitually 



HARD TIMES. 455 

did. Just as it belonged to his boastfulness to depreciate his own 
extraction, so it belonged to it to exalt Mrs. Sparsit's. In the 
measure that he would not allow his own youth to have been at- 
tended by a single favourable circumstance, he brightened Mrs. Spar- 
sit's juvenile career with every possible advantage, and showered 
wagon-loads of early roses all over that lady's path. " And yet, sir," 
he would say, " liow does it turn out after all ? Why here she is at 
a hundred a year (I give her a hundred, which she is pleased to term 
handsome), keeping the house of Josiah Bounderby of Coketown ! " 
Nay, he made this foil of his so very widely known, that third 
parties took it up, and handled it on some occasions with consider- 
able briskness. It was one of the most exasperating attributes of 
Bounderby, that he not only sang his own praises but stimulated 
other men to sing them. There was a moral infection of clap-trap 
in him. Strangers, modest enough elsewhere, started up at dinners 
in Coketown, and boasted, in quite a rampant way, of Bounderby. 
They made him out to be the Royal arms, the Union- Jack, Magna 
Charta, John Bull, Habeas Corpus, the Bill of Rights, An English- 
man's house is his castle. Church and State, and God save the Queen, 
all put together. And as often (and it was very often) as an orator 
of this kind brought into his peroration, 

" Princes and lords may flourish or may fade, 
A breath can make them, as a breath has made," 

— it was, for certain, more or less understood among the company 
that he had heard of Mrs. Sparsit. 

" Mr. Bounderby," said Mrs. Sparsit, " you are unusually slow, 
sir, with your breakfast this morning." 

"Why, ma'am," he returned, "I am thinking about Tom Grad- 
grind's whim"; Tom Gradgrind, for a bluff independent manner 
of speaking — as if somebody were always endeavouring to bribe him 
with immense sums to say Thomas, and he wouldn't ; "Tom Grad- 
grind's whim, ma'am, of bringing up the tumbling-girl." 

" The girl is now waiting to know," said Mrs. Sparsit, " whether 
she is to go straight to the school, or up to the Lodge." 

" She must wait, ma'am," answered Bounderby, " till I know 
myself. We shall have Tom Gradgrind down here presently, I 
suppose. If he should wish her to remain here a day or two longer, 
of course she can, ma'am." 

"Of course she can if you wish it, Mr. Bounderby." 

" I told him I would give her a shake-down here, last night, in 
order that he might sleep on it before he decided to let her have 
any association with Louisa." 

" Indeed, Mr. Bounderby ? Very thoughtful of you ! " 



456 HARD TIMES. 

Mrs. Sparsit's Coriolanian nose underwent a slight expansion of 
the nostrils, and her black eyebrows contracted as she took a sip of 
tea. 

" It's tolerably clear to me," said Bounderby, " that the little puss 
can get small good out of such companionship." 

"Are you speaking of young Miss Gradgrind, Mr. Bounderby?" 

"Yes, ma'am, I'm speaking of Louisa." 

"Your observation being limited to 'little puss,'" said Mrs. 
Sparsit, " and there being two little girls in question, I did not know 
which might be indicated by that expression." 

" Louisa," repeated Mr. Bounderby. " Louisa, Louisa." 

" You are quite another father to Louisa, sir." Mrs. Sparsit took 
a little more tea ; and, as she bent her again contracted eyebrows 
over her steaming cup, rather looked as if her classical countenance 
were invoking the infernal gods. 

" If you had said I was another father to Tom — young Tom, I 
mean, not my friend Tom Gradgrind — you might have been nearer 
the mark. I am going to take young Tom into my office. Going 
to have him under my wing, ma'am." 

" Indeed? Eather young for that, is he not, sir?" Mrs. Spar- 
sit's " sir," in addressing Mr. Bounderby, was a word of ceremony, 
rather exacting consideration for herself in the use, than honouring 
him, 

" I'm not going to take him at once ; he is to finish his educa- 
tional cramming before then," said Bounderby. "By the Lord 
Harry, he'll have enough of it, first and last ! He'd open his eyes, 
that boy would, if he knew how empty of learning my young maw 
was, at his time of life." Which, by-the-bye, he probably did know, 
for he had heard of it often enough. " But it's extraordinary the 
difficulty I have on scores of such subjects, in speaking to any one 
on equal terms. Here, for example, I have been speaking to you 
this morning about tumblers. Why, what do you know about 
tumblers ? At the time when, to have been a tumbler in the mud 
of the streets, would have been a godsend to me, a prize in the 
lottery to me, you were at the Italian Opera. You were coming 
out of the Italian Opera, ma'am, in white satin and jewels, a blaze 
of splendour, when I hadn't a penny to buy a link to light you." 

"I certainly, sir," returned Mrs. Sparsit, with a dignity serenely 
mournful, "was familiar with the Italian Opera at a very early 
age." 

"Egad, ma'am, so was I," said Bounderby, " — with the wrong 
side of it. A hard bed the pavement of its Arcade used to make, 
I assure you. People like you, ma'am, accustomed from infancy 
to lie on Down feathers, have no idea how hard a paving-stone is, 



HARD TIMES. 467 

without trying it. No, no, it's of no use my talking to you about 
tumblers. I should speak of foreign dancers, and the West End 
of London, and May Fair, and lords and ladies and honoura- 
bles." 

"I trust, sir," rejoined Mrs. Sparsit, with decent resignation, 
"it is not necessary that you should do anything of that kind. I 
hope I have learnt how to accommodate myself to the changes of 
life. If I have acquired an interest in hearing of your instructive 
experiences, and can scarcely hear enough of them, I claim no merit 
for that, since I believe it is a general sentiment." 

"Well, ma'am," said her patron, "perhaps some people may be 
pleased to say that they do like to hear, in his own unpolished wiiy, 
what Josiah Bounderby, of Coketown, has gone through. But you 
must confess that you were born in the lap of luxury, yourself. 
Come, ma'am, you know you were born in the lap of luxury." 

" I do not, sir," returned Mrs. Sparsit with a shake of her head, 
"deny it." 

Mr. Bounderby was obliged to get up from the table, and stand 
with his back to the fire, looking at her ; she was such an enhance- 
ment of his position. 

"And you were in crack society. Devilish high society," he 
said, warming his legs. 

" It is true, sir," returned Mrs. Sparsit, with an afiectation of 
humility the very opposite of his, and therefore in no danger of 
jostling it. 

"You were in the tip-top fashion, and aU the rest of it," said 
Mr. Bounderby. 

"Yes, sir," returned Mrs. Sparsit, with a kind of social widow- 
hood upon her. " It is unquestionably true." 

Mr. Bounderby, bending himself at the knees, literally embraced 
his legs in his great satisfaction and laughed aloud. Mr. and Miss 
Gradgrind being then announced, he received the former with a 
shake of the hand, and the latter with a kiss. 

" Can Jupe be sent here, Bounderby % " asked Mr. Gradgrind. 

Certainly. So Jupe was sent there. On coming in, she curt- 
seyed to Mr. Bounderby, and to his friend Tom Gradgrind, and 
also to Louisa ; but in her confusion unluckily omitted Mrs. Spar- 
sit. Observing this, the blustrous Bounderby had the following 
remarks to make : 

" Now, I tell you what, my girl. The name of that lady by 
the teapot, is Mrs. Sparsit. That lady acts as mistress of this 
house, and she is a highly connected lady. Consequently, if ever 
you come again into any room in this house, you will make a short 
stay in it if you don't behave towards that lady in your most 



458 HAKD TIMES. 

respectful manner, Now, I don't care a button what you do to 
me, because I don't affect to be anybody. So far from having high 
connections I have no connections at all, and I come of the scum of 
the earth. But towards that lady, I do care what you do ; and 
you shall do what is deferential and respectful, or you shall not 
come here." 

"I hope, Bounderby," said Mr. Gradgrind, in a conciliatory 
voice, "that this was merely an oversight." 

"My friend Tom Gradgrind suggests, Mrs. Sparsit," said Boun- 
derby, " that this was merely an oversight. Very likely. How- 
ever, as you are aware, ma'am, I don't allow of even oversights 
towards you." 

"You are very good indeed, sir," returned Mrs. Sparsit, shaking 
her head with her state humility. "It is not worth speaking of." 

Sissy, who all this time had been faintly excusing herself with 
tears in her eyes, was now waved over by the master of the house 
to Mr. Gradgrind. She stood looking intently at him, and Louisa 
stood coldly by, with her eyes upon the ground, while he proceeded 
thus : 

" Jupe, I have made up my mind to take you into my house ; 
and, when you are not in attendance at the school, to employ you 
about Mrs. Gradgrind, who is rather an invalid. I have explained 
to Miss Louisa — ■ this is Miss Louisa — the miserable but natural 
end of your late career ; and you are to expressly understand that 
the whole of that subject is past, and is not to be referred to any 
more. From this time you begin your history. You are, at pres- 
ent, ignorant, I know." 

"Yes, sir, very," she answered, curtseying. 

" I shall have the satisfaction of causing you to be strictly edu- 
cated ; and you will be a living proof to all who come into com- 
munication with you, of the advantages of the training you will 
receive. You will be reclaimed and formed. You have been in 
the habit now of reading to your father, and those people I found 
you among, I dare say ? " said Mr. Gradgrind, beckoning her nearer 
to him before he said so, and dropping his voice. 

" Only to father and Merrylegs, sir. At least I mean to father, 
when Merrylegs was always there." 

"Never mind Merrylegs, Jupe," said Mr. Gradgrind, with a 
passing frown. "I don't ask about him. I understand you to 
have been in the habit of reading to your father 1 " 

"0 yes, sir, thousands of times. They were the happiest — 0, 
of all the happy times we had together, sir ! " 

It was only now when her sorrow broke out, that Louisa looked 
at her. 



HARD TIMES. 459 

"And what," asked Mr. Gradgrind, in a still lower voice, "did 
you read to your father, Jupe ? " 

"About the Fairies, sir, and the Dwarf, and the Hunchback, 
and the Genies," she sobbed out; "and about " 

" Hush ! " said Mr. Gradgrind, " that is enough. Never breathe 
a word of such destructive nonsense any more. Bounderby, this 
is a case for rigid training, and I shall observe it with interest." 

" Well," returned Mr. Bounderby, " I have given you my opinion 
already, and I shouldn't do as you do. But, very well, very well. 
Since you are bent upon it, very well ! " 

So, Mr. Gradgrind and his daughter took Cecilia Jupe off with 
them to Stone Lodge, and on the way Louisa never spoke one word, 
good or bad. And Mr. Bounderby went about his daily pursuits. 
And Mrs. Sparsit got behind her eyebrows and meditated in the 
gloom of that retreat, all the evening. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

NEVER WONDEE. 

Let us strike the key-note again, before pursuing the tune. 

When she was half a dozen years younger, Louisa had been over- 
heard to begin a conversation with her brother one day, by saying 
"Tom, I wonder" — upon which Mr. Gradgiind, who was the 
person overhearing, stepped forth into the light and said, "Louisa, 
never wonder ! " 

Herein lay the spring of the mechanical art and mystery of 
educating the reason without stooping to the cultivation of the 
sentiments and affections. Never wonder. By means of addition, 
subtraction, multiplication, and division, settle everything some- 
how, and never wonder. Bring to me, says M'Choakumchild, 
yonder baby just able to walk, and I will engage that it shall 
never wonder. 

Now, besides very many babies just able to walk, there hap- 
pened to be in Coketown a considerable population of babies who 
had been walking against time towards the infinite world, twenty, 
thirty, forty, fifty years and more. These portentous infants being 
alarming creatures to stalk about in any human society, the eigh- 
teen denominations incessantly scratched one another's faces and 
pulled one another's hair by way of agreeing on the steps to be 
taken for their improvement — which they never did ; a surprising 
circumstance, when the happy adaptation of the means to the end 
is considered. Still, although they differed in every other partic- 



460 HARD TIMES. 

ular, conceivable and inconceivable (especially inconceivable), they 
were pretty well united on the point that these unlucky infants 
were never to wonder. Body number one, said they must take 
everything on trust. Body number two, said they must take 
everything on political economy. Body number three, wrote leaden 
little books for them, showing how the good grown-up baby inva- 
riably got to the Savings-bank, and the bad grown-up baby in- 
variably got transported. Body number four, under dreary pre- 
tences of being droll (when it was very melancholy indeed), 
made the shallowest pretences of conceahng pitfalls of knowledge, 
into which it was the duty of these babies to be smuggled 
and inveigled. But, all the bodies agreed that they were never 
to wonder. 

There was a library in Coketown, to which general access was 
easy. Mr. Gradgrind greatly tormented his mind about what the 
people read in this libraiy : a point whereon little rivers of tabular 
statements periodically flowed into the howling ocean of tabular 
statements, which no diver ever got to any depth in and came up 
sane. It was a disheartening circumstance, but a melancholy 
fact, that even these readers persisted in wondering. They won- 
dered about human nature, human passions, human hopes and 
fears, the struggles, triumphs and defeats, the cares and joys and 
sorrows, the lives and deaths of common men and women ! They 
sometimes, after fifteen hours' work, sat down to read mere fables 
about men and women, more or less like themselves, and about 
children, more or less like their own. They took De Foe to their 
bosoms, instead of Euclid, and seemed to be on the whole more 
comforted by Goldsmith than by Cocker. Mr. Gradgrind was 
for ever working, in print and out of print, at this eccentric sum, 
and he never could make out how it yielded this unaccountable 
product. 

" I am sick of my life, Loo. I hate it altogether, and I hate 
everybody except you," said the unnatural young Thomas Gradgrind 
in the hair-cutting chamber at twilight. 

"You don't hate Sissy, Tom?" 

" I hate to be obliged to call her Jupe. And she hates me," 
said Tom, moodily. 

" No, she does not, Tom, I am sure ! " 

" She must," said Tom. " She must just hate and detest the 
whole set-out of us. They'll bother her head off, I think, before 
they have done with her. Already she is getting as pale as wax, 
and as heavy as — I am." 

Young Thomas expressed these sentiments sitting astride of a 
chair before the fire, with his arms on the back, and his sulky face 



HARD TIMES. 461 

on his arms. His sister sat in the darker corner by the fireside, 
now looking at him, now looking at the bright sparks as they 
dropped upon the hearth. 

"As to me," said Tom, tumbling his hair all manner of ways 
with his sulky hands, " I am a Donkey, that's what / am. I am 
as obstinate as one, I am more stupid than one, I get as much pleas- 
ure as one, and I should like to kick like one." 

" Not me, I hope, Tom ? " 

" No, Loo ; I wouldn't hurt you. I made an exception of you 
at first. I don't know what this — jolly old — Jaundiced Jail," 
Tom had paused to find a sufficiently complimentary and expressive 
name for the parental roof, and seemed to relieve his mind for a 
moment by the strong alliteration of this one, "would be without 
you." 

" Indeed, Tom % Do you really and truly say so ? " 

" Why, of course I do. What's the use of talking about it ! " 
returned Tom, chafing his face on his coat-sleeve, as if to mortify 
his flesh, and have it in unison with his spirit. 

"Because, Tom," said his sister, after silently watching the 
sparks awhile, "as I get older, and nearer growing up, I often sit 
wondering here, and think how unfortunate it is for me that I can't 
reconcile you to home better than I am able to do. I don't know 
what other girls know. I can't play to you, or sing to you. I 
can't talk to you so as to enlighten your mind, for I never see any 
amusing sights or read any amusing books that it would be a pleas- 
ure or a relief to you to talk about, when you are tired." 

" Well, no more do I. I am as bad as you in that respect; and 
I am a Mule too, which you're not. If father was determined to 
make me either a Prig or a Mule, and I am not a Prig, why, it 
stands to reason, I must be a Mule. And so I am," said Tom, 
desperately. 

" It's a great pity," said Louisa, after another pause, and speak- 
ing thoughtfully out of her dark corner ! "it's a great pity, Tom. 
It's very unfortunate for both of us." 

" Oh ! You," said Tom; "you are a girl, Loo, and a girl comes 
out of it better than a boy does. I don't miss anything in you. 
You are the only pleasure I have — you can brighten even this 
place — and you can always lead me as you like." 

" You are a dear brother, Tom ; and while you think I can do 
such things, I don't so much mind knowing better. Though I do 
know better, Tom, and am very sorry for it." She came and 
kissed him, and went back into her corner again. 

" I wish I could collect all the Facts we hear so much about," 
said Tom, spitefully setting his teeth, "and aU the Figures, and 



462 HARD TIMES. 

all the people who found them out : and I wish I could put a 
thousand barrels of gunpowder under them, and blow them all up 
together ! However, when I go to live with old Bounderby, I'll 
have my revenge." 

" Your revenge, Tom ? " 

" I mean, I'll enjoy myself a little, and go about and see some- 
thing, and hear something. I'll recompense myself for the way 
in which I have been brought up." 

"But don't disappoint yourself beforehand, Tom. Mr. Boun- 
derby thinks as father thinks, and is a great deal rougher, and not 
half so kind." 

" Oh ; " said Tom, laughing ; " I don't mind that. I shall very 
well know how to manage and smooth old Bounderby ! " 

Their shadows were defined upon the wall, but those of the high 
presses in the room were all blended together on the wall and on 
the ceiling, as if the brother and sister were overhung by a dark 
cavern. Or, a fanciful imagination — if such treason could have 
been there — might have made it out to be the shadow of their 
subject, and of its lowering association with their future. 

"What is your great mode of smoothing and managing, Tom? 
Is it a secret 1 " 

"Oh!" said Tom, "if it is a secret, it's not far off. It's you. 
You are his little pet, you are his favourite ; he'll do anything for 
you. When he says to me what I don't like, I shall say to him, 
* My sister Loo will be hurt and disappointed, Mr. Bounderby. She 
always used to tell me she was sure you would be easier with me 
than this.' That'll bring him about, or nothing will." 

After waiting for some answering remark, and getting none, Tom 
wearily relapsed into the present time, and twined himself yawning 
round and about the rails of his chair, and rumpled his head more 
and more, until he suddenly looked up, and asked : 

" Have you gone to sleep. Loo ? " 

" No, Tom. I am looking at the fire." 

"You seem to find more to look at in it than ever I coidd find," 
said Tom. " Another of the advantages, I suppose, of being a girl." 

" Tom," inquired his sister, slowly, and in a curious tone, as if 
she were reading what she asked in the fire, and it were not quite 
plainly written there, " do you look forward with, any satisfaction 
to this change to Mr. Bounderby's ? " 

" Why, there's one thing to be said of it," returned Tom, push- 
ing his chair from him, and standing up ; "it will be getting away 
from home." 

" There is one thing to be said of it," Louisa repeated in her 
former curious tone ; "it wiU be getting away from home. Yes." 



HAED TIMES. 463 

" Not but what I shall be very unwilling, both to leave you, Loo, 
and to leave you here. But I must go, you know, whether I like 
it or not ; but I had better go where I can take with me some 
advantage of your influence, than where I should lose it altogether. 
Don't you see 1 " 

"Yes, Tom." 

The answer was so long in coming, though there was no indecision 
in it, that Tom went and leaned on the back of her chair, to con- 
template the fii'e which so engrossed her, from her point of view, 
and see what he could make of it. 

" Except that it is a fire," said Tom, " it looks to me as stupid and 
blank as everything else looks. What do you see in it? Not a circus?" 

"I don't see anything in it, Tom, particularly. But since I 
have been looking at it, I have been wondering about you and me, 
gro^m up." 

" Wondering again ! " said Tom. 

" I have such unmanageable thoughts," returned his sister, " that 
they ivill wonder." 

" Then I beg of you, Louisa," said Mrs. Gradgrind, who had 
opened the door without being heard, " to do nothing of that descrip- 
tion, for goodness' sake, you inconsiderate girl, or I shall never hear 
the last of it from your father. And Thomas, it is really shameful, 
with my poor head continually wearing me out, that a boy brought 
up as you have been, and whose education has cost what yours has, 
should be found encouraging his sister to wonder, when he knows 
his father has expressly said that she is not to do it." 

Louisa denied Tom's participation in the offence ; but her mother 
stopped her with the conclusive answer, " Louisa, don't tell me, in 
my state of health ; for unless you had been encouraged, it is mor- 
ally and physically impossible that you could have done it." 

" I was encouraged by nothing, mother, but by looking at the red 
sparks dropping out of the fii'e, and whitening and dying. It made 
me think, after all, how short my life would be, and how little I 
could hope to do in it." 

" Nonsense ! " said Mrs. Gradgrind, rendered almost energetic. 
" Nonsense ! Don't stand there and tell me such stuff, Louisa, to 
my face, when you know very well that if it was ever to reach your 
father's ears I should never hear the last of it. After aU the trouble 
that has been taken with you ! After the lectures you have at- 
tended, and the experiments you have seen! After I have heard 
you myself, when the whole of my right side has been benumbed, 
going on with your master about combustion, and calcination, and 
calorification, and I may say every kind of ation that could drive a 
poor invalid distracted, to hear you talking in this absurd way 



464 HAKD TIMES. 

about sparks and ashes ! I wish," whimpered Mrs. Gradgrind, 
taking a chair, and discharging her strongest point before succumb- 
ing under these mere shadows of facts, "yes, I really do wish that 
I had never had a family, and then you would have known what 
it was to do without me ! " 



CHAPTER IX. 

sissy's peogeess. 

Sissy Jupe had not an easy time of it, between Mr. M'Choakum- 
child and Mrs. Gradgrind, and was not without strong impulses, in 
the first months of her probation, to run away. It hailed facts all 
day long so very hard, and Hfe in general was opened to her as such 
a closely ruled ciphering- book, that assuredly she would have run 
away, but for only one restraint. 

It is lamentable to think of ; but this restraint was the result of 
no arithmetical process, was self-imposed in defiance of all calcula- 
tion, and went dead against any table of probabilities that any 
Actuary would have drawn up from the premises. The girl believed 
that her father had not deserted her ; she lived in the hope that he 
would come back, and in the faith that he would be made the 
happier by her remaining where she was. 

The wretched ignorance with which Jupe clung to this consola- 
tion, rejecting the superior comfort of knowing, on a sound arith- 
metical basis, that her father was an unnatural vagabond, filled Mr. 
Gradgrind with pity. Yet, what was to be done ? M'Choakum- 
child reported that she had a very dense head for figures ; that, once 
possessed with a general idea of the globe, she took the smallest 
conceivable interest in its exact measurements; that she was 
extremely slow in the acquisition of dates, unless some pitiful inci- 
dent happened to be connected there^dth ; that she would burst into 
tears on being required (by the mental process) immediately to name 
the cost of two hundred and forty-seven muslin caps at fourteen- 
pence half-penny; that she was as low down, in the school, as low 
could be ; that after eight weeks of induction into the elements of 
Political Economy, she had only yesterday been set right by a prat- 
tler three feet high, for returning to the question, " What is the 
first principle of this science 1 " the absurd answer, " To do unto 
others as I would that they. should do unto me." 

Mr. Gradgrind observed, shaking his head, that all this was very 
bad ; that it showed the necessity of infinite grinding at the mill 
of knowledge, as per system, schedule, blue book, report, and tabular 



HAED TIMES. 466 

statements A to Z; and that Jiipe "must be kept to it." So 
Jupe was kept to it, and became low-spirited, but no wiser. 

" It would be a fine thing to be you, Miss Louisa ! " she said, one 
night, when Louisa had endeavoured to make her perplexities for 
next day something clearer to her. 

"Do you think so?" 

" I should know so much. Miss Louisa. All that is difficult to 
me now, would be so easy then." 

" You might not be the better for it. Sissy." 

Sissy submitted, after a little hesitation. "I should not be the 
worse. Miss Louisa." To which Miss Louisa answered, " I don't 
know that." 

There had been so little communication between these two — both 
because life at Stone Lodge went monotonously round like a piece 
of machinery which discouraged human interference, and because of 
the prohibition relative to Sissy's past career — that they were still 
almost strangers. Sissy, with her dark eyes wanderingly directed 
to Louisa's face, was uncertain whether to say more or to remain 
silent. 

" You are more useful to my mother, and more pleasant with her 
than I can ever be," Louisa resumed. "You are pleasanter to 
yourself, than / am to myself." 

" But, if you please, Miss Louisa," Sissy pleaded, " I am — so 
stupid ! " 

Louisa, with a brighter laugh than usual, told her she would be 
wiser by-and-bye. 

"You don't know," said Sissy, half crying, "what a stupid 
girl I am. All through school hours I make mistakes. Mr. and 
Mrs. M'Choakumchild call me up, over and over again, regularly to 
make mistakes. I can't help them. They seem to come natural 
to me." 

"Mr. and Mrs. M'Choakumchild never make any mistakes them- 
selves, I suppose, Sissy?" 

"0 no ! " she eagerly returned. " They know everything." 

" Tell me some of your mistakes." 

" I am almost ashamed," said Sissy, with reluctance. " But to- 
day, for instance, Mr. M'Choakumchild was explaining to us about 
Natural Prosperity." 

"National, I think it must have been," observed Louisa. 

"Yes, it was. — But isn't it the same?" she timidly asked. 

"You had better say, National, as he said so," returned Louisa, 
with her dry reserve. 

"National Prosperity. And he said, Now, this schoolroom is 
a Nation. And in this nation, there are fifty millions of money. 



466 HARD TIMES. 

Isn't this a prosperous nation ? Girl number twenty, isn't this a 
prosperous nation, and a'n't you in a thriving state ? " 

" What did you say ? " asked Louisa. 

" Miss Louisa, I said I didn't know. I thought I couldn't know 
whether it was a prosperous nation or not, and whether I was in a 
thriving state or not, unless I knew who had got the money, and 
whether any of it was mine. But that had nothing to do with it. 
It was not in the figTires at all," said Sissy, wiping her eyes. 

"That was a great mistake of yours," observed Louisa. 

" Yes, Miss Louisa, I know it was, now. Then Mr. M'Choakum- 
child said he would try me again. And he said, This schoolroom 
is an immense town, and in it there are a million of inhabitants, 
and only five-and-twenty are starved to death in the streets, in the 
course of a year. What is your remark on that proportion ? And 
my remark was — for I couldn't think of a better one — that I 
thought it must be just as hard upon those who were starved, 
whether the others were a million, or a milhon million. And that 
was wrong, too." 

" Of course it was." 

" Then Mr. M'Choakumchild said he would tiy me once more. 
And he said. Here are the stutterings " 

"Statistics," said Louisa. 

"Yes, Miss Louisa — they always remind me of stutterings, and 
that's another of my mistakes — of accidents upon the sea. And I 
find (Mr. M'Choakumchild said) that in a given time a hundred 
thousand persons went to sea on long voyages, and only five hundred 
of them were drowned or burnt to death. What is the percentage ? 
And I said. Miss;" here Sissy fairly sobbed as confessing with 
extreme contrition to her greatest error; "I said it was nothing." 

"Nothing, Sissy?" 

" Nothing, Miss — to the relations and friends of the people who 
were killed. I shall never learn," said Sissy. "And the worst of 
all is, that although my poor father mshed me so much to learn, 
and although I am so anxious to learn, because he wished me to, I 
am afraid I don't like it." 

Louisa stood looking at the pretty modest head, as it drooped 
abashed before her, until it was raised again to glance at her face. 
Then she asked : 

" Did your father know so much himself, that he wished you to 
be well taught too. Sissy?" 

Sissy hesitated before replying, and so plainly showed her sense 
that they were entering on forbidden ground, that Louisa added, 
" No one hears us ; and if any one did, I am sure no harm could be 
found in such an innocent question." 



HAKD TIMES. 467 

" No, Miss Louisa," answered Sissy, upon this encouragement, 
shaking her head ; " father knows very little indeed. It's as 
much as he can do to write ; and it's more than people in general 
can do to read his wiiting. Though it's plain to 7?ie." 

" Your mother ! " 

"Father says she was quite a scholar. She died when I was 
born. She was ; " Sissy made the terrible communication nervously ; 
" she was a dancer." 

"Did your father love her?" Louisa asked these questions with 
a strong, wild, wandering interest peculiar to her ; an interest gone 
astray like a banished creature, and hiding in solitary places. 

" yes ! As dearly as he loves me. Father loved me, first, for 
her sake. He carried me about with him when I was quite a baby. 
We have never been asunder from that time." 

" Yet he leaves you now, Sissy? " 

" Only for my good. Nobody understands him as I do ; nobody 
knows him as I do. When he left me for my good — he never 
would have left me for his own — I know he was almost broken- 
hearted with the trial. He will not be happy for a single minute, 
till he comes back." 

"Tell me more about him," said Louisa, "I will never ask you 
again. Where did you live ? " 

" We travelled about the country, and had no fixed place to live 
in. Father's a;" Sissy whispered the awful word, "a clown." 

"To make the people laugh?" said Louisa, with a nod of 
intelligence. 

"Yes. But they wouldn't laugh sometimes, and then father 
cried. Lately, they very often wouldn't laugh, and he used to come 
home despairing. Father's not like most. Those who didn't know 
him as well as I do, and didn't love him as dearly as I do, might 
believe he was not quite right. Sometimes they played tricks upon 
him; but they never knew how he felt them, and shrunk up, when 
he was alone with me. He was far, far timider than they thought ! " 

"And you were his comfort through everything?" 

She nodded, with the tears rolling down her face. " I hope so, 
and father said I was. It was because he grew so scared and 
trembling, and because he felt himself to be a poor, weak, ignorant, 
helpless man (those used to be his words), that he wanted me so 
much to know a great deal, and be different from him. I used to 
read to him to cheer his courage, and he was very fond of that. 
They were wrong books — I am never to speak of them here — but 
we didn't know there was any harm in them." 

"And be liked them?" said Louisa, with a searching gaze on 
Sissy all this time. 



468 HAED TIMES. 

"0 very mucli! They kept him, many times, from what did 
him real harm. And often and often of a night, he used to forget 
all his troubles in wondering whether the Sultan would let the 
lady go on with the story, or would have her head cut off before 
it was finished." 

"And your father was always kind? To the last?" asked 
Louisa; contravening the great principle, and wondering very 
much. 

"Always, always ! " returned Sissy, clasping her hands. "Kinder 
and kinder than I can tell. He was angry only one night, and that 
was not to me, but Merrylegs. Merrylegs ; " she whispered the 
awful fact; "is his performing dog." 

" Why was he angry with the dog ? " Louisa demanded. 

"Father, soon after they came home from performing, told 
Merrylegs to jump up on the backs of the two chairs and stand 
across them — which is one of his tricks. He looked at father, 
and didn't do it at once. Everything of father's had gone wrong 
that night, and he hadn't pleased the public at all. He cried out 
that the very dog knew he was failing, and had no compassion on 
him. Then he beat the dog, and I was frightened, and said, 
' Father, father ! Pray don't hurt the creature who is so fond of 
you ! Heaven forgive you, father, stop ! ' And he stopped, and 
the dog was bloody, and father lay down crying on the floor with 
the dog in his arms, and the dog licked his face," 

Louisa saw that she was sobbing ; and going to her, kissed her, 
took her hand, and sat down beside her. 

" Finish by telling me how your father left you, Sissy. Now 
that I have asked you so much, tell me the end. The blame, if 
there is any blame, is mine, not yours." 

" Dear Miss Louisa," said Sissy, covering her eyes, and sobbing 
yet ; "I came home from the school that afternoon, and found poor 
father just come home too, from the booth. And he sat rocking 
himself over the fire, as if he was in pain. And I said, * Have you 
hurt yourself, father ? ' (as he did sometimes, like they all did), 
and he said, ' A little, my darling.' And when I came to stoop 
down and look up at his face, I saw that he was crying. The more 
I spoke to him, the more he hid his face; and at first he shook 
all over, and said nothing but ' My darling ; ' and ' My love ! ' " 

Here Tom came lounging in, and stared at the two with a cool- 
ness not particularly savouring of interest in anything but himself, 
and not much of that at present. 

"I am asking Sissy a few questions, Tom," observed his sister. 
"You have no occasion to go away; but don't interrupt us for a 
moment, Tom dear." 



HAED TIMES. 469 

" Oh ! very well ! " returned Tom. " Only father has brought 
old Bounderby home, and I want you to come into the drawing- 
room. Because if you come, there's a good chance of old Bouuderby's 
asking me to dinner; and if you don't, there's none." 

" I'll come directly." 

"I'll wait for you," said Tom, "to make sure." 

Sissy resumed in a lower voice. " At last poor father said that 
he had given no satisfaction again, and never did give any satisfac- 
tion now, and that he was a shame and disgrace, and I should have 
done better without him all along. I said all the affectionate 
things to him that came into my heart, and presently he was quiet 
and I sat down by him, and told him all about the school and every- 
thing that had been said and done there. When I had no more 
left to tell, he put his arms round my neck, and kissed me a great 
many times. Then he asked me to fetch some of the stuff he used, 
for the little hurt he had had, and to get it at the best place, 
which was at the other end of town from there ; and then, after 
kissing me again, he let me go. When I had gone downstairs, I 
turned back that I might be a little bit more company to him yet, 
and looked in at the door, and said, ' Father dear, shall I take 
Merrylegs ? ' Father shook his head and said, ' No, Sissy, no ; 
take nothing that's known to be mine, my darling ; ' and I left 
him sitting by the fire. Then the thought must have come upon 
him, poor, poor father ! of going away to try something for my 
sake ; for when I came back, he was gone." 

" I say ! Look sharp for old Bounderby, Loo ! " Tom remonstrated. 

"There's no more to tell, Miss Louisa. I keep the nine oils 
ready for him, and I know he will come back. Every letter that 
I see in Mr. Gradgrind's hand takes my breath away and blinds 
my eyes, for I think it comes from father, or from Mr. Sleary about 
father. Mr. Sleary promised to write as soon as ever father should 
be heard of, and I trust to him to keep his word." 

" Do look sharp for old Bounderby, Loo ! " said Tom, with an 
impatient whistle, " He'll be off if you don't look sharp ! " 

After this, whenever Sissy dropped a curtsey to Mr. Gradgrind 
in the presence of his family, and said in a faltering way, " I beg 
your pardon, sir, for being troublesome — but — have you had any 
letter yet about me 1 " Louisa would suspend the occupation of 
the moment, whatever it was, and look for the reply as earnestly 
as Sissy did. And when Mr. Gradgrind regularly answered, " 'No, 
Jupe, nothing of the sort," the trembling of Sissy's lip would be 
repeated in Louisa's face, and her eyes would follow Sissy with 
compassion to the door. Mr. Gradgrind usually improved these 
occasions by remarking, when she was gone, that if Jupe had been 



470 HARD TIMES. 

properly trained from an early age she would have remonstrated 
to herself on sound principles the baselessness of these fantastic 
hopes. Yet it did seem (though not to him, for he saw nothing of 
it) as if fantastic hope could take as strong a hold as Fact. 

This observation must be limited exclusively to his daughter. 
As to Tom, he was becoming that not unprecedented triumph of 
calculation which is usually at work on number one. As to Mrs. 
Gradgrind, if she said anything on the subject, she would come a 
little way out of her wrappers, like a feminine dormouse, and say : 

" Good gracious bless me, how my poor head is vexed and 
worried by that girl Jupe's so perseveriugly asking, over and over 
again, about her tiresome letters ! Upon my word and honour I 
seem to be fated, and destined, and ordained, to live in the midst 
of things that I am never to hear the last of It reaUy is a most 
extraordinary circumstance that it appears as if I never was to hear 
the last of anything I "' 

At about this point, Mr. Gradgiind's eye would fall upon her; 
and under the influence of that wintry piece of fact, she would 
become torpid again. 



CHAPTER X. 

STEPHEX BKICKPOOL. 

I EXTEETAix a weak idea that the English people are as hard- 
worked as any people upon whom the sun shines. I acknowledge 
to this ridiculous idiosjTicrasy, as a reason why I would give them 
a little more play. 

In the hardest working part of Coketown; in the innermost 
fortifications of that ugly citadel, where Xature was as strongly 
bricked out as killing aii's and gases were bricked in ; at the heart 
of the labyrinth of narrow courts upon courts, and close streets 
upon streets, which had come into existence piecemeal, every piece 
in a violent huriy for some one man's purpose, and the whole an 
unnatural family, shouldering, and trampling, and pressing one 
another to death ; in the last close nook of this great exhausted 
receiver, where the chimneys, for want of air to make a draught, 
were built in an immense variety of stunted and crooked shapes, as 
though every house put out a sign of the kind of people who might 
be expected to be born in it ; among the multitude of Coketown, 
generically called "the Hands," — a race who would have found 
more favour with some people, if Providence had seen fit to make 



HARD TIMES. 471 

them only hands, or, like the lower creatures of the seashore, only- 
hands and stomachs — lived a certain Stephen Blackpool, forty 
years of age. 

Stephen looked older, but he had had a hard life. It is said that 
every life has its roses and thorns ; there seemed, however, to have 
been a misadventure or mistake in Stephen's case, whereby some- 
body else had become possessed of his roses, and he had become 
possessed of the same somebody else's thorns in addition to his own. 

He had known, to use his words, a peck of trouble. He was 
usually called Old Stephen, in a kind of rough homage to the fact. 
A rather stooping man, with a knitted brow, a pondering expres- 
sion of face, and a hard-looking head sufficiently capacious, on 
which his iron-grey hair lay long and thin, Old Stephen might have 
passed for a particularly intelligent man in his condition. Yet he 
was not. He took no place among those remarkable "Hands," 
who, piecing together their broken intervals of leisure through 
many years, had mastered difficult sciences, and acquired a knowl- 
edge of most unlikely things. He held no station among the 
Hands who could make speeches and carry on debates. Thousands 
of his compeers could talk much better than he, at any time. He 
was a good power-loom weaver, and a man of perfect integrity. 
What more he was, or what else he had in him, if anything, let him 
show for himself. 

The lights in the great factories, which looked, when they were 
illuminated, like Fairy palaces — or the travellers by express-train 
said so — were all extinguished ; and the bells had rung for knock- 
ing off for the night, and had ceased again ; and the Hands, men 
and women, boy and girl, were clattering home. Old Stephen was 
standing in the street, with the old sensation upon him which the 
stoppage of the machinery always produced — the sensation of its 
having worked and stopped in his own head. 

"Yet I don't see Rachael, still ! " said he. 

It was a wet night, and many groups of young women passed 
him, with their shawds drawn over their bare heads and held close 
under their chins to keep the rain out. He knew Rachael well, 
for a glance at any one of these groups was sufficient to show him 
that she was not there. At last, there were no more to come ; and 
then he turned away, saying in a tone of disappointment, " Why, 
then, I ha' missed her ! " 

But, he had not gone the length of three streets, when he saw 
another of the shawled figures in advance of him, at which he looked 
so keenly that perhaps its mere shadow indistinctly reflected on the 
wet pavement — if he could have seen it without the figure itself 
moving along from lamp to lamp, brightening and fading as it went 



472 HARD TIMES. 

— would have been enough to tell him who was there. Making 
his pace at once much quicker and much softer, he darted on until 
he was very near this figure, then fell into his former walk, and 
called "Eachael!" 

She turned, being then in the brightness of a lamp ; and raising 
her hood a little, showed a quiet oval face, dark and rather delicate, 
irradiated by a pair of very gentle eyes, and further set off by the 
perfect order of her shining black hair. It was not a face in its 
first bloom ; she was a woman five-and-thirty years of age. 

" Ah, lad ! 'Tis thou 1 " When she had said this, with a smile 
which would have been quite expressed, though nothing of her had 
been seen but her pleasant eyes, she replaced her hood again, and 
they went on together. 

" I thought thou wast ahind me, Rachael ! " 

"No." 

" Early t'night, lass?" 

" 'Times I'm a little early, Stephen ! 'times a little late. Vm 
never to be counted on, going home." 

" Nor going t'other way, neither, 't seems to me, Rachael ? " 

" No, Stephen." 

He looked at her with some disappointment in his face, but with 
a respectful and patient conviction that she must be right in what- 
ever she did. The expression was not lost upon her ; she laid her 
hand lightly on his arm a moment as if to thank him for it. 

" We are such true friends, lad, and such old friends, and getting 
to be such old folk, now." 

" No, Rachael, thou'rt as young as ever thou wast." 

" One of us would be puzzled how to get old, Stephen, without 
t'other getting so too, both being alive," she answered, laughing; 
"but, anyways, we're such old friends, that t'hide a word of 
honest truth fro' one another would be a sin and a pity. 'Tis 
better not to walk too much together. 'Times, yes ! 'Twould be 
hard, indeed, if 'twas not to be at all," she said, with a cheerfulness 
she sought to communicate to him. 

" 'Tis hard, anyways, Rachael." 

" Try to think not ; and 'twill seem better." 

"I've tried a long time, and 'ta'nt got better. But thou'rt right; 
'tmight mak fok talk, even of thee. Thou hast been that to me, 
Rachael, through so many year : thou hast done me so much good, 
and heartened of me in that cheering way, that thy word is a law 
to me. Ah, lass, and a bright good law ! Better than some real 
ones." 

" Never fret about them, Stephen," she answered quickly, and 
not without an anxious glance at his face. " Let the laws be." 



HARD TIMES. 473 

"Yes," he said, with a slow nod or two. "Let 'em be. Let 
everything be. Let all sorts alone. 'Tis a muddle, and that's 
aw." 

"Always a muddle?" said Rachael, with another gentle touch 
upon his arm, as if to recall him out of the thoughtfulness, in 
which he was biting the long ends of his loose neckerchief as he 
walked along. The touch had its instantaneous effect. He let 
them fall, turned a smiling face upon her, and said, as he broke 
into a good-humoured laugh, "Ay, Rachael, lass, awlus a muddle. 
That's where I stick. I come to the muddle many times and agen, 
and I never get beyond it." 

They had walked some distance, and were near their own homes. 
The woman's was the first reached. It was in one of the many 
small streets for which the favourite undertaker (who turned a 
handsome sum out of the one poor ghastly pomp of the neighbour- 
hood) kept a black ladder, in order that those who had done their 
daily groping up and down the narrow stairs might slide out of this 
working world by the windows. She stopped at the corner, and 
putting her hand in his, wished him good night. 

" Good night, dear lass ; good night ! " 

She went, with her neat figure and her sober womanly step, 
down the dark street, and he stood looking after her until she 
turned into one of the small houses. There was not a flutter of 
her coarse shawl, perhaps, but had its interest in this man's eyes ; 
not a tone of her voice but had its echo in his innermost heart. 

When she was lost to his view, he pursued his homeward way, 
glancing up sometimes at the sky, where the clouds were sailing 
fast and wildly. But, they were broken now, and the rain had 
ceased, and the moon shone, — looking down the high chimneys of 
Coketown on the deep furnaces below, and casting Titanic shadows of 
the steam engines at rest, upon the walls where they were lodged. 
The man seemed to have brightened with the night, as he went 
on. 

His home, in such another street as the first, saving that it was 
narrower, was over a little shop. How it came to pass that any 
people found it worth their while to sell or buy the wretched little 
toys, mixed up in its window with cheap newspapers and pork 
(there was a leg to be rafiled for to-morrow night), matters not 
here. He took his end of candle from a shelf, lighted it at another 
end of candle on the counter, without disturbing the mistress of the 
shop who was asleep in her little room, and went upstairs into his 
lodging. 

It was a room, not unacquainted with the black ladder under 
various tenants ; but as neat, at present, as such a room could be. 



474 HARD TIMES. 

A few books and writings were on an old bureau in a comer, the 
furniture was decent and sufficient, and, though the atmosphere was 
tainted, the room was clean. 

Going to the hearth to set the candle down upon a round three- 
legged table standing there, he stumbled against something. As 
he recoiled, looking down at it, it raised itself up into the form of 
a woman in a sitting attitude. 

" Heaven's mercy, woman !" he cried, falling farther off from the 
figure. " Hast thou come back again ! " 

Such a woman ! A disabled, drunken creature, barely able to 
preserve her sitting posture by steadying herself with one begrimed 
hand on the floor, while the other was so purposeless in trying to 
push away her tangled hair from her face, that it only blinded her 
the more with the dirt upon it. A creature so foul to look at, in 
her tatters, stains and splashes, but so much fouler than that in her 
moral infamy, that it was a shameful thing even to see her. 

After an impatient oath or two, and some stupid clawing of her- 
self with the hand not necessary to her support, she got her hair 
away from her eyes sufficiently to obtain a sight of him. Then she 
sat swaying her body to and fro, and making gestures with her 
unnerved arm, which seemed intended as the accompaniment to a 
fit of laughter, though her face was stolid and drowsy. 

"Eigh lad? What, yo'r there?" Some hoarse sounds meant 
for this, came mockingly out of her at last ; and her head dropped 
forward on her breast. 

"Back agen?" she screeched, after some minutes, as if he had 
that moment said it. " Yes ! And back agen. Back agen ever 
and ever so often. Back ? Yes, back. Why not ? " 

Roused by the unmeaning violence mth which she cried it out, 
she scrambled up, and stood supporting herself with her shoulders 
against the wall ; dangling in one hand by the string, a dunghill- 
fragment of a bonnet, and trying to look scornfully at him. 

" I'll sell thee off again, and I'll sell thee off again, and I'll sell 
thee off a score of times ! " she cried, with something between a 
furious menace and an effort at a defiant dance. "Come awa' 
from th' bed!" He was sitting on the side of it, with his face 
hidden in his hands. " Come awa' from 't. 'Tis mine, and I've 
a right to 't ! " 

As she staggered to it, he avoided her with a shudder, and 
passed — his face still hidden — to the opposite end of the room. 
She threw herself upon the bed heavily, and soon was snoring 
hard. He sunk into a chair, and moved but once all that night. 
It was to throw a covering over her ; as if his hands were not 
enough to hide her, even in the darkness. 



HARD TIMES. 475 

CHAPTER XI. 

NO WAY OUT. 

The Fairy palaces burst into illumination, before pale morning 
showed the monstrous serpents of smoke trailing themselves over 
Coketown. A clattering of clogs upon the pavement; a rapid 
ringing of bells ; and all the melancholy mad elephants, polished 
and oiled up for the day's monotony, were at their heavy exercise 
again. 

Stephen bent over his loom, quiet, watchful, and steady. A 
special contrast, as every man was in the forest of looms where 
Stephen worked, to the crashing, smashing, tearing piece of mech- 
anism at which he laboured. Never fear, good people of an anxious 
turn of mind, that Art will consign Nature to oblivion. Set any- 
where, side by side, the work of God and the work of man ; and 
the former, even though it be a troop of Hands of very small 
account, will gain in dignity from the comparison. 

So many hundred Hands in this Mill; so many hundred horse 
Steam Power. It is known, to the force of a single pound weight, 
what the engine will do ; but, not all the calculators of the 
National Debt can tell me the capacity for good or evil, for love 
or hatred, for patriotism or discontent, for the decomposition of 
virtue into vice, or the reverse, at any single moment in the soul 
of one of these its quiet servants, with the composed faces and the 
regulated actions. There is no mystery in it ; there is an unfath- 
omable mystery in the meanest of them, for ever. — Supposing we 
were to reserve our arithmetic for material objects, and to govern 
these awful unknown quantities by other means ! 

The day grew strong, and showed itself outside, even against the 
flaming lights within. The lights were turned out, and the work 
went on. The rain fell, and the Smoke-serpents, submissive to the 
curse of all that tribe, trailed themselves upon the earth. In the 
waste-yard outside, the steam from the escape pipe, the litter of 
barrels and old iron, the shining heaps of coals, the ashes every- 
where, were shrouded in a veil of mist and rain. 

The work went on, until the noon-bell rang. More clattering 
upon the pavements. The looms, and wheels, and Hands all out 
of gear for an hour. 

Stephen came out of the hot mill into the damp wind and cold 
wet streets, haggard and worn. He turned from his own class and 
his own quarter, taking nothing but a little bread as he walked 
along, towards the hill on which his principal employer lived, in a 
red house with black outside shutters, green inside blinds, a black 



476 HAKD TIMES. 

street door, up two white steps, Bounderby (in letters very like 
himself) upon a brazen plate, and a round brazen door-handle under- 
neath it, like a brazen full-stop. 

Mr. Bounderby was at his lunch. So Stephen had expected. 
Would his servant say that one of the Hands begged leave to speak 
to him ? Message in return, requiring name of such Hand. Stephen 
Blackpool. There was nothing troublesome against Stephen Black- 
pool ; yes, he might come in. 

Stephen Blackpool in the parlour. Mr. Bounderby (whom he 
just knew by sight) at lunch on chop and sherry. Mrs. Sparsit 
netting at the fireside, in a side-saddle attitude, with one foot in 
a cotton stirrup. It was a part, at once of Mrs. Sparsit's dignity 
and service, not to lunch. She supervised the meal officially, but 
implied that in her own stately person she considered lunch a 
weakness. 

"Now, Stephen," said Mr. Bounderby, "what's the matter with 
you ? " 

Stephen made a bow. Not a servile one — these Hands will 
never do that ! Lord bless you, sir, you'll never catch them at 
that, if they have been with you twenty years ! — and, as a com- 
plimentary toilet for Mrs. Sparsit, tucked his neckerchief ends into 
his waistcoat. 

"Now, you know," said Mr. Bounderby, taking some sherry, 
" we have never had any difficulty with you, and you have never 
been one of the unreasonable ones. You don't expect to be set up 
in a coach and six, and to be fed on turtle soup and venison, with 
a gold spoon, as a good many of 'em do ! " Mr. Bounderby always 
represented this to be the sole, immediate, and direct object of 
any Hand who was not entirely satisfied; "and therefore I know 
already that you have not come here to make a complaint. Now, 
you know, I am certain of that, beforehand." 

" No, sir, sure I ha' not coom for nowt o' th' kind." 

Mr. Bounderby seemed agreeably surprised, notwithstanding his 
previous strong conviction. "Very well," he returned. "You're 
a steady Hand, and I was not mistaken. Now, let me hear what 
it's all about. As it's not that, let me hear what it is. What 
have you got to say ? Out with it, lad ! " 

Stephen happened to glance towards Mrs. Sparsit. " I can go, 
Mr. Bounderby, if you wish it," said that self-sacrificing lady, 
making a feint of taking her foot out of the stirrup. 

Mr. Bounderby stayed her, by holding a mouthful of chop in 
suspension before swallowing it, and putting out his left hand. 
Then, withdrawing his hand and swallowing his mouthful of chop, 
he said to Stephen : 



HAED TIMES. 477 

" Now you know, this good lady is a born lady, a liigh lady. 
You are not to suppose because she keeps my house for me, that 
she hasn't been very high up the tree — ah, up at the top of the 
tree ! Now, if you have got anything to say that can't be said 
before a born lady, this lady will leave the room. If what you 
have got to say can be said before a born lady, this lady will stay 
where she is." 

" Sir, I hope I never had nowt to say, not fitten for a born lady 
to year, sin' I were born mysen'," was the reply, accompanied with 
a slight flush. 

"Very well," said Mr. Bounderby, pushing away his plate, and 
leaning back. " Fire away ! " 

"I ha' coom," Stephen began, raising his eyes from the floor, 
after a moment's consideration, "to ask yo yor advice. I need't 
overmuch. I were married on Eas'r Monday nineteen year sin, 
long and dree. She were a young lass — pretty enow — wi' good 
accounts of herseln. Well ! She went bad — soon. Not along 
of me. Gonnows I were not a unkind husband to her." 

" I have heard all this before," said Mr. Bounderby. " She took 
to drinking, left off" working, sold the furniture, pawned the clothes, 
and played old Gooseberry." 

" I were patient wi' her." 

("The more fool you, I think," said Mr. Bounderby, in confl- 
dence to his wine-glass.) 

" I were very patient wi' her. I tried to wean her fra't ower 
and ower agen. I tried this, I tried that, I tried t'other. I ha' 
gone home, many's the time, and found all vanished as I had in 
the world, and her without a sense left to bless herseln lying on 
bare ground. I ha' dun't not once, not twice — twenty time ! " 

EA^ery line in his face deepened as he said it, and put in its 
affecting evidence of the suffering he had undergone. 

" From bad to worse, from worse to worsen. She left me. She 
disgraced herseln everyways, bitter and bad. She coom back, she 
coom back, she coom back. What could I do t' hinder her 1 I ha' 
walked the streets nights long, ere ever I'd go home. I ha' gone 
t' th' brigg, minded to fling myseln ower, and ha' no more on't. 
I ha' bore that much, that I were owd when I were young." 

Mrs. Sparsit, easily ambling along with her netting-needles, 
raised the Coriolanian eyebrows and shook her head, as much as to 
say, " The great know trouble as well as the small. Please to 
turn your humble eye in My direction." 

" I ha' paid her to keep awa' fra' me. These five year I ha' 
paid her. I ha' gotten decent fewtrils about me agen. I ha' 
lived hard and sad, but not ashamed and fearfo' a' the minnits o' 



478 HARD TIMES. 

my life. Last night, I went home. There she lay upon my har- 
stone ! There she is ! " 

In the strength of his misfortune, and the energy of his distress, 
he fired for the moment like a proud man. In another moment, 
he stood as he had stood all the time — his usual stoop upon him ; 
his pondering face addressed to Mr. Bounderby, with a curious 
expression on it, half shrewd, half perplexed, as if his mind were 
set upon unravelling something very difficult; his hat held tight 
in his left hand, which rested on his hip ; his right arm, with a 
rugged propriety and force of action, very earnestly emphasising 
what he said : not least so when it always paused, a little bent, 
but not withdrawn, as he paused. 

"I was acquainted with all this, you know," said Mr. Boun- 
derby, " except the last clause, long ago. It's a bad job ; that's 
what it is. You had better have been satisfied as you were, and 
not have got married. However, it's too late to say that." 

" Was it an unequal marriage, sir, in point of years 1 " asked 
Mrs. Sparsit. 

" You hear what this lady asks. Was it an unequal marriage 
in point of years, this unlucky job of yours ? " said Mr. Bounderby. 

" Not e'en so. I were one-and-twenty myseln ; she were twenty 
nighbut." 

" Indeed, sir 1 " said Mrs. Sparsit to her Chief, with great pla- 
cidity. "I inferred, from its being so miserable a marriage, that 
it was probably an unequal one in point of years." 

Mr. Bounderby looked very hard at the good lady in a sidelong 
way that had an odd sheepishness about it. He fortified himself 
with a little more sherry. 

" Well ? Why don't you go on ? " he then asked, turning rather 
irritably on Stephen Blackpool. 

"I ha' coom to ask yo, sir, how I am to be ridded o' this 
woman." Stephen infused a yet deeper gravity into the mixed 
expression of his attentive face. Mrs. Sparsit uttered a gentle 
ejaculation, as having received a moral shock. 

" What do you mean ? " said Bounderby, getting up to lean his 
back against the chimney-piece. "What are you talking about ? 
You took her for better for worse." 

" I mun' be ridden o' her. I cannot bear't nommore. I ha' 
lived under't so long, for that I ha' had'n the pity and comforting 
words o' th' best lass living or dead. Haply, but for her, I should 
ha' gone hottering mad." 

" He wishes to be free, to marry the female of whom he speaks, 
I fear, sir," observed Mrs. Sparsit in an undertone, and much 
dejected by the immorality of the people. 



HARD TIMES. 479 

"I do. The lady says what's right. I do. I were a coming 
to 't. I ha' read i' th' papers that great fok (fair faw 'em a' ! I 
wishes 'em no hurt ! ) are not bonded together for better for worse 
so fast, but that they can be set free fro' their misfortnet mar- 
riages, an marry ower agen. When they dunnot agree, for that 
their tempers is ill-sorted, they has rooms o' one kind an another in 
their houses, above a bit, and they can live asunders. We fok ha' 
only one room, and we can't. When that won't do, they ha' gowd 
an other cash, an they can say ' This for yo' an that for me,' an 
they can go their separate ways. AVe can't. Spite o' all that, 
they can be set free for smaller wrongs than mine. So, I mun' be 
ridden o' this woman, and I want t' know how 1 " 

"No how," returned Mr. Bounderby. 

" If I do her any hurt, sir, there's a law to punish me ? " 

" Of course there is." 

" If I flee from her, there's a law to punish me 1 " 

"Of course there is." 

" If I marry t'oother dear lass, there's a law to punish me ? " 

" Of course there is." 

" If I was to live wi' her and not marry her — saying such a 
thing could be, which it never could or would, an her so good 
— there's a law to punish me, in every innocent child belonging 
tome?" 

" Of course there is." 

"Now, a' God's name," said Stephen Blackpool, "show me the 
law to help me ! " 

"Hem! There's a sanctity in this relation of life," said Mr. 
Bounderby, " and — and — it must be kept up." 

" No, no, dunnot say that, sir. 'Tan't kep' up that way. Not 
that way. 'Tis kep' do^m that way. I'm a weaver, I were in a 
fact'ry when a chilt, but I ha' gotten een to see wi' and eern to 
year wi'. I read in th' papers every 'Sizes, every Sessions — and 
you read too — I know it ! — vdih. dismay — how th' supposed 
unpossibility o' ever getting unchained from one another, at any 
price, on any terms, brings blood upon this land, and brings many 
common married fok to battle, murder, and sudden death. Let us 
ha' this, right understood. Mine's a grievous case, and I want — 
if yo will be so good — t' know the law that helps me." 

" Now, I tell you what ! " said Mr. Bounderby, putting his hands 
in his pockets. " There z's such a law." 

Stephen, subsiding into his quiet manner, and never wandering 
in his attention, gave a nod. 

" But it's not for you at all. It costs money. It costs a mint 
of money." 



480 HARD TIMES. 

" How much might that be ?" Stephen calmly asked. 

"Why, you'd have to go to Doctors' Commons with a suit, and 
you'd have to go to a court of Common Law with a suit, and you'd 
have to go to the House of Lords with a suit, and you'd have to 
get an Act of Parhament to enable you to marry again, and it 
would cost you (if it was a case of very plain sailing), I suppose 
from a thousand to fifteen hundred pound," said Mr, Bounderby. 
" Perhaps twice the money." 

" There's no other law 1 " 

" Certainly not." 

" Why then, sir," said Stephen, turning white, and motioning 
with that right hand of his, as if he gave everything to the four 
winds, "'^^s a muddle. 'Tis just a muddle a'toogether, an the 
sooner I'm dead, the better." 

(Mrs. Sparsit again dejected by the impiety of the people.) 

"Pooh, pooh ! Don't you talk nonsense, my good fellow," said 
Mr. Bounderby, "about things you don't understand; and don't 
you caU the Institutions of your country a muddle, or you'll get 
yourself into a real muddle one of these fine mornings. The Insti- 
tutions of your country are not your piece-work, and the only thing 
you have got to do, is, to mind your piece-work. You didn't take 
your wife for fast and for loose ; but for better for worse. If she 
has turned out worse — - why, all we have got to say is, she might 
have turned out better." 

" 'Tis a muddle," said Stephen, shaking his head as he moved 
to the door. " 'Tis a' a muddle ! " 

" Now, I'll tell you what ! " Mr. Bounderby resumed, as a vale- 
dictory address. " With what I shall call your unhallowed opin- 
ions, you have been quite shocking this lady : who, as I have 
already told you, is a born lady, and who, as I have not already 
told you, has had her own marriage misfortunes to the tune of tens 
of thousands of pounds — tens of Thousands of Pounds ! " (he 
repeated it with great relish). "Now, you have always been a 
steady Hand hitherto ; but my opinion is, and so I tell you plainly, 
that you are turning into the wrong road. You have been listen- 
ing to some mischievous stranger or other — they're always about 
— and the best thing you can do is, to come out of that. Now 
you know ; " here his countenance expressed marvellous acuteness ; 
" I can see as far into a grindstone as another man ; farther than a 
good many, perhaps, because I had my nose well kept to it when I 
was young. I see traces of the turtle soup, and venison, and gold 
spoon in this. Yes, I do ! " cried Mr. Bounderby, shaking his head 
with obstinate cunning. " By the Lord Harry, I do ! " 

With a very difierent shake of the head and deep sigh, Stephen 



HAKD TIMES. 481 

said, "Thank you, sir, I wish you good day." So he left Mr. 
Bounderby swelling at his own portrait on the wall, as if he were 
going to explode himself into it ; and Mrs. Sparsit still ambling on 
with her foot in her stirrup, looking quite cast down by the popu- 
lar vices. 



CHAPTER XII. 

THE OLD WOMAN. 

Old Stephen descended the two white steps, shutting the black 
door with the brazen door-plate, by the aid of the brazen full-stop, 
to which he gave a parting polish with the sleeve of his coat, 
observing that his hot hand clouded it. He crossed the street 
with his eyes bent upon the ground, and thus was walking sorrow- 
fully away, when he felt a touch upon his arm. 

It was not the touch he needed most at such a moment — the 
touch that could calm the wild waters of his soul, as the uplifted 
hand of the sublimest love and patience could abate the raging of 
the sea — yet it was a woman's hand too. It was an old woman, 
tall and shapely still, though withered by time, on whom his eyes 
fell when he stopped and turned. She was very cleanly and plainly 
dressed, had country mud upon her shoes, and was newly come 
from a journey. The flutter of her manner, in the unwonted 
noise of the streets ; the spare shawl, carried unfolded on her arm ; 
the heavy umbrella, and little basket ; the loose long-fingered gloves, 
to which her hands were unused ; all bespoke an old woman from 
the country, in her plain holiday clothes, come into Coketown on an 
expedition of rare occurrence. Remarking this at a glance, with 
the quick observation of his class, Stephen Blackpool bent his 
attentive face — his face, which, like the faces of many of his 
order, by dint of long working with eyes and hands in the midst of 
a prodigious noise, had acquired the concentrated look with which 
we are familiar in the countenances of the deaf — the better to 
hear what she asked him. 

" Pray, sir," said the old woman, " didn't I see you come out of 
that gentleman's house 1 " pointing back to Mr. Bounderby's. " I 
believe it was you, unless I have had the bad luck to mistake the 
person in following 1 " 

"Yes, missus," returned Stephen, "it were me." 

"Have you — you'll excuse an old woman's curiosity — have 
you seen the gentleman ? " 

"Yes, missus." 

" And how did he look, sir ? Was he portly, bold, outspoken, 



482 HAED TIMES. 

and hearty ? " As she straightened her own figure, and held up 
her head in adapting her action to her words, the idea crossed 
Stephen that he had seen this old woman before, and had not 
quite liked her. 

" yes," he returned, observing her more attentively, "he were 
all that." 

"And healthy," said the old woman, " as the fresh wind?" 

" Yes," returned Stephen. " He were ett'n and drinking — 
as large and as loud as a Hummobee." 

" Thank you ! " said the old woman, with infinite content. 
" Thank you ! " 

He certainly never had seen this old woman before. Yet there 
was a vague remembrance in his mind, as if he had more than once 
dreamed of some old woman like her. 

She walked along at his side, and, gently accommodating himself 
to her humour, he said Coketown was a busy place, was it not? 
To w^hich she answered "Eigh sure! Dreadful busy!" Then he 
said, she came from the country, he saw ? To which she answered 
in the affirmative. 

" By Parliamentary, this morning. I came forty mile by Parlia- 
mentaiy this morning, and I'm going back the same forty mile this 
afternoon. I walked nine mile to the station this morning, and if 
I find nobodj^ on the road to give me a lift, I shall walk the nine 
mile back to-night. That's pretty well, sir, at my age ! " said the 
chatty old woman, her eye brightening with exultation. 

" 'Deed 'tis. Don't do't too often, missus." 

"No, no. Once a year," she answered, shaking her head. "I 
spend my savings so, once every year. I come regular, to tramp 
about the streets, and see the gentlemen." 

" Only to see 'em?" returned Stephen. 

" That's enough for me," she replied, with great earnestness and 
interest of manner. " I ask no more ! I have been standing about, 
on this side of the way, to see that gentleman," turning her head 
back towards Mr. Bounderby's again, "come out. But, he's late 
this year, and I have not seen him. You came out instead. Now, 
if I am obliged to go back without a glimpse of him — I only want 
a glimpse — well ! I have seen you, and you have seen him, and I 
must make that do." Saying this, she looked at Stephen as if to fix 
his features in her mind, and her eye was not so bright as it had been. 

With a large allowance for difi'erence of tastes, and with all 
submission to the patricians of Coketown, this seemed so extraor- 
dinary a source of interest to take so much trouble about, that it per- 
plexed him. But they were passing the church now, and as his 
eye caught the clock, he quickened his pace. 

He was going to his work ? the old woman said, quickening hers, 



HAKD TIMES. 483 

too, quite easily. Yes, time was nearly out. On his telling her 
where he worked, the old woman became a more singular old woman 
than before. 

"An't you happy?" she asked him. 

" Why — there's awmost nobbody but has their troubles, missus." 
He answered evasively, because the old woman appeared to take 
it for granted that he would be very happy indeed, and he had not 
the heart to disappoint her. He knew that there was trouble 
enough in the world ; and if the old woman had lived so long, and 
could count upon his having so little, why so much the better for 
her, and none the worse for him. 

" Ay, ay ! You have your troubles at home, you mean 1 " she 
sajd. 

"Times. Just now and then," he answered, slightly. 

" But, working under such a gentleman, they don't follow you 
to the Factory?" 

No, no ; they didn't follow him there, said Stephen. All correct 
there. Everything accordant there. (He did not go so far as to 
say, for her pleasure, that there was a sort of Divine Right there ; 
but, I have heard claims almost as magnificent of late years.) 

They were now in the black by-road near the place, and the 
Hands were crowding in. The bell was ringing, and the Serpent 
was a Serpent of many coils, and the Elephant was getting ready. 
The strange old woman was delighted with the very bell. It was 
the beautifuUest bell she had ever heard, she said, and sounded 
grand ! 

She asked him, when he stopped good-naturedly to shake hands 
with her before going in, how long he had worked there ? 

" A dozen year," he told her. 

"I must kiss the hand," said she, "that has worked in this fine 
factory for a dozen year ! " And she lifted it, though he would 
have prevented her, and put it to her lips. What harmony, besides 
her age and her simplicity, surrounded her, he did not know, but 
even in this fantastic action there was a something neither out of 
time nor place : a something which it seemed as if nobody else 
could have made as serious, or done with such a natural and touch- 
ing air. 

He had been at his loom full half an hour, thinking about this 
old woman, when, having occasion to move round the loom for its 
adjustment, he glanced through a window which was in his corner, 
and saw her still looking up at the pile of building, lost in admi- 
ration. Heedless of the smoke and mud and wet, and of her two 
long journeys, she was gazing at it, as if the heavy thrum that 
issued from its many stories were proud music to her. 



484 HARD TIMES. 

She was gone by-and-bye, and the day went after her, and the 
lights sprung up again, and the Express whirled in full sight of the 
Fairy Palace over the arches near : little felt amid the jarring 
of the machinery, and scarcely heard above its crash and rattle. 
Long before then his thoughts had gone back to the dreaiy room 
above the little shop, and to the shameful figure heavy on the bed, 
but heavier on his heart. 

Machinery slackened; throbbing feebly like a fainting pulse; 
stopped. The bell again ; the glare of light and heat dispelled ; 
the factories, looming heavy in the black wet night — their tall 
chimneys rising up into the ak like competing Towers of Babel. 

He had spoken to Rachael only last night, it was true, and had 
walked vrith her a Uttle way ; but he had his new misfortune on 
him, in which no one else could give him a moment's reUef, and, 
for the sake of it, and because he knew himself to want that soften- 
ing of his anger which no voice but hers could effect, he felt he 
might so far disregard what she had said as to wait for her again. 
He waited, but she had eluded him. She was gone. On no other 
night in the year could he so ill have spared her patient face. 

! Better to have no home in which to lay his head, than to 
have a home and dread to go to it, through such a cause. He ate 
and drank, for he was exhausted — but he little knew or cared 
what : and he wandered about in the chill rain, thinking and think- 
ing, and brooding and brooding. 

No word of a new marriage had ever passed between them; 
but Rachael had taken great pity on him years ago, and to her 
alone he had opened his closed heart all this time, on the subject 
of his miseries ; and he knew very well that if he were free to ask 
her, she would take him. He thought of the home he might at 
that moment have been seeking with pleasure and pride; of the 
different man he might have been that night ; of the lightness then 
in his now heavj'-laden breast ; of the then restored honour, self- 
respect, and tranquillity all torn to pieces. He thought of the 
waste of the best part of his life, of the change it made in his char- 
acter for the worse every day, of the dreadful nature of his existence, 
bound hand and foot, to a dead woman, and tormented by a demon 
in her shape. He thought of Rachael, how young when they were 
first brought together in these ch'cumstances, how mature now, how 
soon to gi'ow old. He thought of the number of girls and women 
she had seen many, how many homes with children in them she 
had seen gi'ow up around her, how she had contentedly pursued 
her own lone quiet path — for him — and how he had sometimes 
seen a shade of melancholy on her blessed face, that smote him 
with remorse and despair. He set the picture of her up, beside 



HARD TIMES. 485 

the infamous image of last night; and thought, Could it be, that 
the whole earthly course of one so gentle, good, and self-denying, 
was subjugate to such a wretch as that ! 

Filled with these thoughts — so filled that he had an unwhole- 
some sense of growing larger, of being placed in some new and 
diseased relation towards the objects among which he passed, of 
seeing the iris round every misty light turn red — he went home 
for shelter. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

EACHAEL. 

A CAXDLE faintly burned in the window, to which the black 
ladder had often been raised for the sliding away of all that was 
most precious in this world to a striving wife and a brood of hun- 
giy babies ; and Stej^hen added to his other thoughts the stern 
reflection, that of all the casualties of this existence upon earth, 
not one was dealt out with so unequal a hand as Death. The ine- 
quahty of Birth was nothing to it. For, say that the child of a 
King and the child of a Weaver were bom to-night in the same 
moment, what was that disparity, to the death of any human creat- 
ure who was serviceable to, or beloved by, another, while this 
abandoned woman lived on ! 

From the outside of his home he gloomily passed to the inside, 
with suspended breath and with a slow footstep. He went up to 
his door, opened it, and so into the room. 

Quiet and peace were there. Rachael was there, sitting by the 
bed. 

She turned her head, and the hght of her face shone in upon 
the midnight of his mind. She sat by the bed, watching and tend- 
ing his wife. That is to say, he saw that some one lay there, and 
he knew too well it must be she ; but Rachael's hands had put a 
curtain up, so that she was screened from his eyes. Her disgrace- 
ful garments were removed, and some of Rachael's were in the room. 
Everything was in its place and order as he had always kept it, 
the little fire was newly trimmed, and the hearth was freshly swept. 
It appeared to him that he saw all this in Rachael's face, and 
looked at nothing besides. While looking at it, it was shut out 
from his view by the softened tears that filled his eyes ; but not 
before he had seen how earnestly she looked at him, and how her 
own eyes were filled too. 

She turned again towards the bed, and satisfying herself that 
all was quiet there, spoke in a low, calm, cheerful voice. 



486 HARD TIMES. 

" I am glad you have come at last, Stephen. You are very 
late." 

"I ha' been walking up an' down." 

" I thought so. But 'tis too bad a night for that. The rain 
falls very heavy, and the wind has risen." 

The wind 1 True. It was blowing hard. Hark to the thun- 
dering in the chimney, and the surging noise ! To have been out 
in such a wind, and not to have known it was blowing ! 

"I have been here once before, to-day, Stephen. Landlady 
came round for me at dinner-time. There was some one here that 
needed looking to, she said. And 'deed she was right. All wan- 
dering and lost, Stephen. Wounded too, and bruised." 

He slowly moved to a chair and sat down, drooping his head 
before her. 

" I came to do what little I could, Stephen ; first, for that she 
worked with me when we were girls both, and for that you courted 
her and married her when I was her friend — " 

He laid his furrowed forehead on his hand, with a low groan. 

" And next, for that I know your heart, and am right sure and 
certain that 'tis far too merciful to let her die, or even so much as 
sufier, for want of aid. Thou knowest who said, ' Let him who is 
without sin among you cast the first stone at her ! ' There have 
been plenty to do that. Thou art not the man to cast the last 
stone, Stephen, when she is brought so low." 

"OEachael, Rachael ! " 

" Thou hast been a cruel sufierer. Heaven reward thee ! " she 
said, in compassionate accents. " I am thy poor friend, with all 
my heart and mind." 

The wounds of which she had spoken, seemed to be about the 
neck of the self-made outcast. She dressed them now, still with- 
out showing her. She steeped a piece of linen in a basin, into 
which she poured some liquid from a bottle, and laid it with a 
gentle hand upon the sore. The three-legged table had been drawn 
close to the bedside, and on it there were two bottles. This was 
one. 

It was not so far off, but that Stephen, following her hands with 
his eyes, could read what was printed on it in large letters. He 
turned of a deadly hue, and a sudden horror seemed to fall upon 
him. 

" I will stay here, Stephen," said Rachael, quietly resuming her 
seat, "till the bells go Three. 'Tis to be done again at three, and 
then she may be left till morning." 

" But thy rest agen to-morrow's work, my dear." 

" I slept sound last night. I can wake many nights, when I am 




STEPHEN AND KACHAEL IN THE SICK-ROOM. 



488 HAED TIMES. 

put to it. 'Tis thou who art in need of rest — so white and tired. 
Try to sleep in the chair there, while I watch. Thou hadst no 
sleep last night, I can well believe. To-morrow's work is far 
harder for thee than for me." 

He heard the thundering and surging out of doors, and it seemed 
to him as if his late angry mood were going about trying to get at 
him. She had cast it out ; she would keep it out ; he trusted to 
her to defend him from himself. 

" She don't know me, Stephen ; she just drowsily mutters and 
stares. I have spoken to her times and again, but she don't notice ! 
'Tis as well so. When she comes to her right mind once more, I 
shall have done what I can, and she never the wiser." 

"How long, Rachael, is't looked for, that she'll be so?" 

"Doctor said she would haply come to her mind to-morrow." 

His eyes fell again on the bottle, and a tremble passed over him, 
causing him to shiver in every limb. She thought he was chilled 
with the wet. "No," he said, "it was not that. He had had a 
fright." 

"A fright?" 

" Ay, ay ! coming in. When I were walking. When I v/ere 
thinking. When I — " It seized him again ; and he stood up, 
holding by the mantel-shelf, as he pressed his dank cold hair down 
with a hand that shook as if it were palsied. 

" Stephen ! " 

She was coming to him, but he stretched out his arm to stop 
her. 

" No ! Don't, please ; don't. Let me see thee setten by the 
bed. Let me see thee, a' so good, and so forgiving. Let me see 
thee as I see thee when I coom in. I can never see thee better 
than so. Never, never, never ! " 

He had a violent fit of trembling, and then sunk into his chair. 
After a time he controlled himself, and, resting with an elbow 
on one knee, and his head upon that hand, could look towards 
Rachael. Seen across the dim candle with his moistened eyes, 
she looked as if she had a glory shining round her head. He could 
have believed she had. He did believe it, as the noise without 
shook the window, rattled at the door below, and went about the 
house clamouring and lamenting. 

"When she gets better, Stephen, 'tis to be hoped she'll leave 
thee to thyself again, and do thee no more hurt. Anyways we 
will hope so now. And now I shall keep silence, for I want thee 
to sleep." 

He closed his eyes, more to please her than to rest his Aveary head ; 
but, by slow degrees as he listened to the gi'eat noise of the wind, 



HARD TIMES. 489 

he ceased to hear it, or it changed into the working of his loom, or 
even into the voices of the day (his o^\m included) saying what had 
been really said. Even this imperfect consciousness faded away at 
last, and lae dreamed a long, troubled dream. 

He thought that he, and some one on whom his heart had long 
been set — but she was not Eachael, and that surprised him, even 
in the midst of his imaginaiy happiness — stood in the church 
being married. While the ceremony was performing, and while he 
recognised among the witnesses some whom he knew to be living, 
and many whom he knew to be dead, darkness came on, succeeded 
by the shining of a tremendous light. It broke from one line in 
the table of commandments at the altar, and illuminated the 
building with the words. They were sounded through the church, 
too, as if there were voices in the fiery letters. Upon this, the 
whole appearance before him and around him changed, and nothing 
was left as it had been, but himself and the clergyman. They 
stood in the daylight before a crowd so vast, that if all the people 
in the world could have been brought together into one space, they 
could not have looked, he thought, more numerous ; and they all 
abhorred him, and there was not one pitying or friendly eye among 
the millions that were fastened on his face. He stood on a raised 
stage, under his own loom ; and, looking up at the shape the loom 
took, and hearing the burial service distinctly read, he knew that 
he was there to suff'er death. In an instant what he stood on fell 
below him, and he was gone. 

Out of what mystery he came back to his usual life, and to 
places that he knew, he was unable to consider ; but he was back 
in those places by some means, and with this condemnation upon 
him, that he was never, in this world or the next, through all the 
unimaginable ages of eternity, to look on Rachael's face or hear her 
voice. Wandering to and fro, unceasingly, without hope, and in 
search of he knew not what (he only knew that he was doomed to 
seek it), he was the subject of a nameless, horrible dread, a mortal 
fear of one particular shape which everything took. Whatsoever 
he looked at, grew into that form sooner or later. The object of 
his miserable existence was to prevent its recognition by any one 
among the various people he encountered. Hopeless labour ! If he 
led them out of rooms where it was, if he shut up drawers and 
closets where it stood, if he drew the curious from places where he 
knew it to be secreted, and got them out into the streets, the very 
chimneys of the mills assumed that shape, and round them was 
the printed word. 

The wind was blowing again, the rain was beating on the house- 
tops, and the larger spaces through which he had strayed contracted 



490 HARD TIMES. 

to the four walls of his room. Saving that the fire had died out, 
it was as his eyes had closed upon it. Rachael seemed to have fallen 
into a doze, in the chair by the bed. She sat wrapped in her shawl, 
perfectly still. The table stood in the same place, close by the 
bedside, and on it, in its real proportions and appearance, was the 
shape so often repeated. 

He thought he saw the curtain move. He looked again, and he 
was sure it moved. He saw a hand come forth and grope about a 
little. Then the curtain moved more perceptibly, and the woman 
in the bed put it back, and sat up. 

With her woful eyes, so haggard and wild, so heavy and large, 
she looked all round the room, and passed the corner where he slept 
in his chair. Her eyes returned to that corner, and she put her 
hand over them as a shade, while she looked into it. Again they 
went all round the room, scarcely heeding Rachael if at all, and 
returned to that corner. He thought, as she once more shaded 
them — not so much looking at him, as looking for him with a 
brutish instinct that he was there — that no single trace was left 
in those debauched features, or in the mind that went along with 
them, of the woman he had married eighteen years before. But 
that he had seen her come to this by inches, he never could have 
believed her to be the same. 

All this time, as if a spell were on him, he was motionless and 
powerless, except to watch her. 

Stupidly dozing, or communing with her incapable self about 
nothing, she sat for a little while with her hands at her ears, and 
her head resting on them. Presently, she resumed her staring round 
the room. And now, for the first time, her eyes stopped at the 
table with the bottles on it. 

Straightway she turned her eyes back to his comer, with the 
defiance of last night, and moving very cautiously and softly, 
stretched out her greedy hand. She drew a mug into the bed, and 
sat for a while considering which of the two bottles she should choose. 
Finally, she laid her insensate grasp upon the bottle that had swift 
and certain death in it, and, before his eyes, pulled out the cork 
with her teeth. 

Dream or reality, he had no voice, nor had he power to stir. 
If this be real, and her allotted time be not yet come, wake, 
Rachael, wake ! 

She thought of that, too. She looked at Rachael, and very slowly, 
very cautiously, poured out the contents. The draught was at her 
lips. A moment and she would be past all help, let the whole 
world wake and come about her with its utmost power. But in 
that moment Rachael started up with a suppressed cry. The 



HARD TIMES. 491 

creature struggled, struck her, seized her by the hair ; but Rachael 
had the cup. 

Stephen broke out of his chair. "Rachael, am I wakin' or 
dreamin' this dreadfo' night ? " 

" 'Tis all well, Stephen. I have been asleep myself. 'Tis near 
three. Hush ! I hear the bells." 

The wind brought the sounds of the church clock to the window. 
They listened, and it struck three. Stephen looked at her, saw 
how pale she was, noted the disorder of her hair, and the red marks 
of fingers on her forehead, and felt assured that his senses of sight 
and hearing had been awake. She held the cup in her hand even 
now. 

"I thought it must be near three," she said, calmly pouring from 
the cup into the basin, and steeping the linen as before. "I am 
thankful I stayed ! 'Tis done now, when I have put this on. 
There ! And now she's quiet again. The few drops in the basin 
I'll pour away, for 'tis bad stuff to leave about, though ever so little 
of it." As she spoke, she drained the basin into the ashes of the 
fire, and broke the bottle on the hearth. 

She had nothing to do, then, but to cover herself with her shawl 
before going out into the wind and rain. 

" Thou'lt let me walk wi' thee at this hour, Rachael ? " 

"No, Stephen. 'Tis but a minute, and I'm home." 

" Thou'rt not fearfo' ; " he said it in a low voice, as they went out 
at the door ; "to leave me alone wi' her ! " 

As she looked at him, saying, " Stephen ? " he went down on 
his knee before her, on the poor mean stairs, and put an end of 
her shawl to his lips. 

" Thou art an Angel. Bless thee, bless thee ! " 

" I am, as I have told thee, Stephen, thy poor friend. Angels 
are not like me. Between them, and a working woman fu' of 
faults, there is a deep gulf set. My little sister is among them, 
but she is changed." 

She raised her eyes for a moment as she said the words ; and 
then they fell again, in all their gentleness and mildness, on his 
face. 

" Thou changest me from bad to good. Thou mak'st me hum- 
bly wishfo' to be more like thee, and fearfo' to lose thee when this 
life is ower, and a' the muddle cleared awa'. Thou'rt an Angel ; 
it may be, thou hast saved my soul alive ! " 

She looked at him, on his knee at her feet, with her shawl still in 
his hand, and the reproof on her lips died away when she saw the 
working of his face. 

*' I coom home desp'rate. I coom home wi'out a hope, and mad 



492 HARD TIMES. 

wi' thinking that when I said a word o' complaint I was reckoned 
a onreasonable Hand, I told thee I had had a fright. It were the 
Poison-bottle on table. I never hurt a livin' creetur; but hap- 
peuin' so suddenly upon 't, I thowt, ' How can / say what I might 
ha' done to myseln, or her, or both ! ' " 

She put her two hands on his mouth, with a face of terror, to 
stop him from saying more. He caught them in his unoccupied 
hand, and holding them, and still clasping the border of her shawl, 
said hurriedly : 

"But I see thee, Rachael, setten by the bed. I ha' seen thee, 
aw this night. In my troublous sleep I ha' known thee still to 
be there. Evermore I will see thee there. I nevermore will see 
her or think o' her, but thou shalt be beside her. I nevermore 
will see or think o' anything that angers me, but thou, so much 
better than me, shalt be by th' side on't. And so I will try t' 
look t' th' time, and so I will try t' trust t' th' time, when thou 
and me at last shall walk together far awa', beyond the deep gulf, 
in th' country where thy little sister is." 

He kissed the border of her shawl again, and let her go. She 
bade him good night in a broken voice, and went out into the 
street. 

The wind blew from the quarter where the day would soon 
appear, and still blew strongly. It had cleared the sky before it, 
and the rain had spent itself or travelled elsewhere, and the stars 
were bright. He stood bareheaded in the road, watching her quick 
disappearance. As the shining stars were to the heavy candle in 
the window, so was Rachael, in the rugged fancy of this man, to 
the common experiences of his life. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

THE GREAT MANUFACTURER. 

Time went on in Coketown like its own machinery : so much 
material wrought up, so much fuel consumed, so many powers 
worn out, so much money made. But, less inexorable than iron, 
steel, and brass, it brought its varying seasons even into that 
wilderness of smoke and brick, and made the only stand that ever 
ivas made in the place against its direful uniformity. 

"Louisa is becoming," said Mr. Gradgrind, "almost a young 
woman." 

Time with his innumerable horse-power, worked away, not mind- 
ing what anybody said, and presently turned put young Thomas 



HARD TIMES. 493 

a foot taller than when his father had last taken particular notice 
of him. 

" Thomas is becoming," said Mr. Gradgrind, "almost a young 
man." 

Time passed Thomas on in the mill, while his father was think- 
ing about it, and there he stood in a long-tailed coat and a stiff 
shirt-collar. 

"Really," said Mr. Gradgrind, "the period has arrived when 
Thomas ought to go to Bounderby." 

Time, sticking to him, passed him on into Bounderby's bank, 
made him an inmate of Bounderby's house, necessitated the pur- 
chase of his first razor, and exercised him diligently in his calcula- 
tions relative to number one. 

The same great manufacturer, always with an immense variety 
of work on hand, in every stage of development, passed Sissy 
onward in his mill, and worked her up into a very pretty article 
indeed. 

"I fear, Jupe," said Mr. Gradgrind, "that your continuance at 
the school any longer would be useless." 

" I am afraid it would, sir," Sissy answered with a curtsey. 

"I cannot disguise from you, Jupe," said Mr. Gradgrind, knit- 
ting his brow, "that the result of your probation there has disap- 
pointed me ; has greatly disappointed me. You have not acquired, 
under Mr. and Mrs. M'Choakumchild, anything like that amount 
of exact knowledge which I looked for. You are extremely defi- 
cient in your facts. Your acquaintance with figures is very limited. 
You are altogether backward, and below the mark." 

"I am sorry, sir," she returned; "but I know it is quite true. 
Yet I have tried hard, sir." 

"Yes," said Mr. Gradgrind, "yes, I believe you have tried hard; 
I have observed you, and I can find no fault in that respect." 

" Thank you, sir. I have thought sometimes ; " Sissy very timid 
here; "that perhaps I tried to learn too much, and that if I had 
asked to be allowed to try a little less, I might have " 

"No, Jupe, no," said Mr. Gradgrind, shaking his head in his 
profoundest and most eminently practical way. "No. The course 
you pursued, you pursued according to the system — the system 
— and there is no more to be said about it. I can only suppose 
that the circumstances of your early life were too unfavourable to 
the development of your reasoning powers, and that we began too 
late. Still, as I have said already, I am disappointed." 

"I wish I could have made a better acknowledgment, sir, of 
your kindness to a poor forlorn girl who had no claim upon you, 
and of your protection of her." 



494 HARD TIMES. 

"Don't shed tears," said Mr. Gradgrind. "Don't shed tears. 
I don't complain of you. You are an affectionate, earnest, good 
young woman — and — and we must make that do." 

"Thank you, sii', veiy much," said Sissy, with a grateM 
curtsey. 

" You are useful to Mrs. Gradgrind, and (in a generally pervading 
way) you are serviceable in the family also ; so I understand from 
Miss Louisa, and, indeed, so I have observed myself. I therefore 
hope," said Mr. Gradgrind, "that you can make yourself happy in 
those relations." 

" I should have nothing to msh, sir, if " 

"I understand you," said Mr. Gradgrind; "you still refer to 
your father. I have heard from Miss Louisa that you still pre- 
serve that bottle. Well ! If your training in the science of arriv- 
ing at exact results had been more successful, you would have 
been wiser on these points. I vvill say no more." 

He really liked Sissy too well to have a contempt for her ; other- 
wise he held her calculating powers in such very slight estimation 
that he must have fallen upon that conclusion. Somehow or other, 
he had become possessed by an idea that there was something in 
this girl which could hardly be set forth in a tabular form. 
Her capacity of definition might be easily stated at a very low 
figure, her mathematical knowledge at nothing; yet he was not 
sure that if he had been required, for example, to tick her off into 
columns in a parliamentary return, he would have quite known 
how to divide her. 

In some stages of his manufacture of the human fabric, the 
processes of Time are very rapid. Young Thomas and Sissy being 
both at such a stage of their working up, these changes were 
effected in a year or two ; while Mr. Gradgrind himself seemed 
stationary in his course, and underwent no alteration. 

Except one, which was apart from his necessary progress through 
the mill. Time hustled him into a little noisy and rather dirty 
machinery, in a by-comer, and made him Member of Parliament for 
Coketown : one of the respected members for ounce weights and 
measures, one of the representatives of the multiplication table, one of 
the deaf honourable gentlemen, dumb honourable gentlemen, blind 
honourable gentlemen, lame honourable gentlemen, dead honourable 
gentlemen, to eveiy other consideration. Else wherefore live we in 
a Christian land, eighteen hundred and odd years after our Master 1 

All this while, Louisa had been passing on, so quiet and reserved, 
and so much given to watching the bright ashes at twilight as they 
fell into the grate and became extinct, that from the period when 
her father had said she was almost a young woman — which 



HARD TIMES. 495 

seemed but yesterday — she had scarcely attracted his notice again, 
when he found her quite a young woman. 

" Quite a young woman," said Mr. Gradgrind, musing. "Dear 



me 



Soon after this discovery, he became more thoughtful than usual 
for several days, and seemed much engrossed by one subject. On 
a certain night, when he was going out, and Louisa came to bid 
him good bye before his departure — as he was not to be home 
until late and she would not see him again until the morning — 
he held her in his arms, looking at her in his kindest manner, and 
said : 

" My dear Louisa, you are a woman ! " 

She answered with the old, quick, searching look of the night 
when she was found at the Circus; then cast down her eyes. 
"Yes, father." 

" My dear," said Mr. Gradgrind, " I must speak with you alone 
and seriously. Come to me in my room after breakfast to-morrow, 
will you ? " 

"Yes, father." 

" Your hands are rather cold, Louisa. Are you not well ? " 

"Quite well, father." 

" And cheerful ? " 

She looked at him again, and smiled in her peculiar manner. 
"I am as cheerful, father, as I usually am, or usually have 
been." 

"That's well," said Mr. Gradgrind. So, he kissed her and went 
away ; and Louisa returned to the serene apartment of the hair- 
cutting character, and leaning her elbow on her hand, looked again 
at the short-lived sparks that so soon subsided into ashes. 

" Are you there. Loo ? " said her brother, looking in at the door. 
He was quite a young gentleman of pleasure now, and not quite a 
prepossessing one. 

"Dear Tom," she answered, rising and embracing him, "how 
long it is since you have been to see me ! " 

" Why, I have been otherwise engaged. Loo, in the evenings ; 
and in the daytime old Bounderby has been keeping me at it 
rather. But I touch him up with you when he comes it too strong, 
and so we preserve an understanding. I say ! Has father said 
anything particular to you to-day or yesterday. Loo ? " 

" No, Tom. But he told me to-night that he wished to do so in 
the morning." 

" Ah ! That's what I mean," said Tom. " Do you know where 
he is to-night ? " — with a very deep expression. 

"No." 



496 HARD TIMES. 

" Then I'll tell you. He's with old Bounderby. They are hav- 
ing a regular confab together up at the Bank. Why at the Bank, 
do you think ? WeU, I'll teU you again. To keep Mrs. Sparsit's 
ears as far off as possible, I expect." 

With her hand upon her brother's shoulder, Louisa still stood 
looking at the fire. Her brother glanced at her face with greater 
interest than usual, and, encircling her waist with his ann, drew 
her coaxingly to him. 

"You are very fond of me, an't you, Loo?" 

" Indeed I am, Tom, though you do let such long inteiTals go 
by without coming to see me." 

" Well, sister of mine," said Tom, " when you say that, you are 
near my thoughts. We might be so much oftener together — 
mightn't we? Always together, almost — -mightn't we? It 
would do me a great deal of good if you were to make up your 
mind to I know what, Loo. It woidd be a splendid thing for me. 
It would be uncommonly jolly ! " 

Her thoughtfulness bafiled his cunning scrutiny. He could 
make nothing of her face. He pressed her in his arm, and kissed 
her cheek. She returned the kiss, but still looked at the fire. 

" I say. Loo ! I thought I'd come, and just hint to you what was 
going on : though I supposed you'd most likely guess, even if you 
didn't know. I can't stay, because I'm engaged to some fellows 
to-night. You won't forget how fond you are of me ? " 

"^^0, dear Tom, I won't forget." 

" That's a capital girl," said Tom. " Grood bye. Loo." 

She gave him an affectionate good night, and went out with him 
to the door, whence the fires of Coketown could be seen, making 
the distance lurid. She stood there, looking steadfastly towards 
them, and listening to his departing steps. They retreated quickly, 
as glad to get aAvay from Stone Lodge ; and she stood there yet, 
when he was gone and aU was quiet. It seemed as if, first in her 
own fire within the house, and then in the fiery haze without, she 
tried to discover what kind of woof Old Time, that greatest and 
longest-estabhshed Spinner of aU, would weave from the threads 
he had already spun into a woman. But his factoiy is a secret 
place, his work is noiseless, and his Hands are mutes. 



HARD TIMES. 497 

CHAPTER XV. 

FATHER AND DAUGHTER. 

Although Mr. Gradgrind did not take after Blue Beard, his 
room was quite a blue chamber in its abundance of blue books. 
Whatever they could prove (which is usually anything you like), 
they proved there, in an army constantly strengthening by the 
arrival of new recruits. In that charmed apartment, the most 
comphcated social questions were cast up, got into exact totals, and 
finally settled — if those concerned could only have been brought 
to know it. As if an astronomical observatory should be made 
without any windows, and the astronomer within should arrange 
the starry universe solely by pen, ink, and paper, so Mr. Gradgrind, 
in his Observatory (and there are many Hke it), had no need to 
cast an eye upon the teeming mjTiads of human beings around him, 
but could settle all their destinies on a slate, and wipe out all their 
tears "uith one dirty httle bit of sponge. 

To this Observatory, then : a stern room, with a deadly statistical 
clock in it, which measured every second with a beat hke a rap upon 
a coffin-lid ; Louisa repaired on the appointed morning. A window 
looked towards Coketown ; and when she sat down near her father's 
table, she saw the high chimneys and the long tracts of smoke 
looming in the heavy distance gloomily. 

"My dear Louisa," said her father, "I prepared you last night 
to give me your serious attention in the conversation we are now 
going to have together. You have been so well trained, and you 
do, I am happy to say, so much justice to the education you have 
received, that I have perfect confidence in your good sense. You 
are not impulsive, you are not romantic, you are accustomed to 
view everything from the strong dispassionate ground of reason and 
calculation. From that ground alone, I know you will view and 
consider what I am going to communicate." 

He waited, as if he would have been glad that she said something. 
But she said never a word. 

"Louisa, my dear, you are the subject of a proposal of marriage 
that has been made to me." 

Again he waited, and again she answered not one word. This so 
far surprised him, as to induce him gently to repeat, " a proposal 
of marriage, my dear." To which she returned, without any visi- 
ble emotion whatever : 

" I hear you, father. I am attending, I assure you." 

" Well ! " said Mr. Gradgiind, breaking into a snule, after being 
for the moment at a loss, "you are even more dispassionate than I 



498 HARD TIMES. 

expected, Louisa. Or, perhaps, you are not unprepared for the 
announcement I have it in charge to make 1 " 

" I cannot say that, father, until I hear it. Prepared or unpre- 
pared, I wish to hear it all from you. I wish to hear you state it 
to me, father." 

Strange to relate, Mr. Gradgrind was not so collected at this 
moment as his daughter was. He took a paper-knife in his hand, 
turned it over, laid it down, took it up again, and even then had to 
look along the blade of it, considering how to go on. 

" What you say, my dear Louisa, is perfectly reasonable. I have 

undertaken then to let you know that in short, that Mr. 

Bounderby has informed me that he has long watched your progress 
with particular interest and pleasure, and has long hoped that the 
time might ultimately arrive when he should offer you his hand in 
marriage. That time, to which he has so long, and certainly with 
great constancy, looked forward, is now come. Mr. Bounderby has 
made his proposal of marriage to me, and has entreated me to make 
it known to you, and to express his hope that you will take it into 
your favourable consideration." 

Silence between them. The deadly statistical clock very hollow. 
The distant smoke very black and heavy. 

"Father," said Louisa, "do you think I love Mr. Bounderby?" 

Mr. Gradgrind was extremely discomfited by this unexpected 
question. "Well, my child," he returned, "I — really — cannot 
take upon myself to say." 

" Father," pursued Louisa in exactly the same voice as before, 
" do you ask me to love Mr. Bounderby ? " 

" My dear Louisa, no. No. I ask nothing." 

"Father," she still pursued, "does Mr. Bounderby ask me to 
love him ? " 

" Really, my dear," said Mr. Gradgrind, "it is difficult to answer 
your question — " 

" Difficult to answer it, Yes or No, father?" 

" Certainly, my dear. Because ; " here was something to demon- 
strate, and it set him up again ; " because the reply depends so ma- 
terially, Louisa, on the sense in which we use the expression. Now, 
Mr. Bounderby does not do you the injustice, and does not do him- ' 
self the injustice, of pretending to anything fanciful, fantastic, or 
(I am using synonymous terms) sentimental. Mr. Bounderby would 
have seen you grow up under his eyes, to very little purpose, if he 
could so far forget what is due to your good sense, not to say to his, 
as to address you from any such ground. Therefore, perhaps the 
expression itself — I merely suggest this to you, my dear — may be 
a little misplaced." 



i 



HARD- TIMES. 499 

" What would you advise me to use in its stead, father 1 " 

"Why, my dear Louisa," said Mr. Gradgrind, completely recov- 
ered by this time, " I would advise you (since you ask me) to con- 
sider this question, as you have been accustomed to consider every 
other question, simply as one of tangible Fact. The ignorant and 
the giddy may embarrass such subjects with irrelevant fancies, and 
other absurdities that have no existence, properly viewed — really 
no existence — but it is no compliment to you to say, that you know 
better. Now, what are the Facts of this case ? You are, we will 
say in round numbers, twenty years of age ; Mr. Bounderby is, we 
will say in round numbers, fifty. There is some disparity in your 
respective years, but in your means and positions there is none ; on 
the contrary, there is a great suitability. Then the question arises. 
Is this one disparity sufficient to operate as a bar to such a marriage 1 
In considering this question, it is not unimportant to take into 
account the statistics of marriage, so far as they have yet been 
obtained, in England and Wales. I find, on reference to the figures, 
that a large proportion of these marriages are contracted between 
parties of very unequal ages, and that the elder of these contracting 
parties is, in rather more than three-fourths of these instances, the 
bridegi'oom It is remarkable as showing the wide prevalence of this 
law, that among the natives of the British possessions in India, also 
in a considerable part of China, and among the Calmucks of Tartaiy, 
the best means of computation yet furnished us by travellers, yield 
similar results. The disparity I have mentioned, therefore, almost 
ceases to be disparity, and (virtually) all but disappears." 

" What do you recommend, father," asked Louisa, her reserved 
composure not in the least affected by these gi'atifying results, 
"that I should substitute for the term I used just now? For the 
misplaced expression 1 " 

"Louisa," returned her father, "it appears to me that nothing 
can be plainer. Confining yourself rigidly to Fact, the question of 
Fact you state to yourself is : Does Mr. Bounderby ask me to marry 
him ? Yes, he does. The sole remaining question then is : Shall 
I marry him ? I think nothing can be plainer than that ? " 

" Shall I marry him 1 " repeated Louisa, with great deliberation. 

" Precisely. And it is satisfactory to me, as your father, my 
dear Louisa, to know that you do not come to the consideration of 
that question with the previous habits of mind, and habits of life, 
that belong to many young women." 

" No, father," she returned, " I do not." 

" I now leave you to judge for yourself," said Mr. Gradgrind. 
" I have stated the case, as such cases are usually stated among 
practical minds ; I have stated it, as the case of your mother and 



600 HAED TIMES. 

myself was stated in its time. The rest, my dear Louisa, is for you 
to decide." 

From the beginning, she had sat looking at him fixedly. As he 
now leaned back in his chair, and bent his deep set eyes upon her 
in his turn, perhaps he might have seen one wavering moment in 
her, when she was impelled to throw herself upon his breast, and 
give him the pent-up confidences of her heart. But, to see it, he 
must have overleaped at a bound the artificial barriers he had for 
many years been erecting, between himself and all those subtle 
essences of humanity which will elude the utmost cunning of algebra 
until the last trumpet ever to be sounded shall blow even algebra 
to wreck. The barriers were too many and too high for such a 
leap. With his unbending, utilitarian, matter-of-fact face, he hard- 
ened her again; and the moment shot away into the plumbless 
depths of the past, to mingle with all the lost opportunities that 
are drowned there. 

Removing her eyes from him, she sat so long looking silently 
towards the town, that he said, at length : "Are you consulting the 
chimneys of the Coketown works, Louisa?" 

" There seems to be nothing there but languid and monotonous 
smoke. Yet when the night comes. Fire bursts out, father ! " she 
answered, turning quickly. 

" Of course I know that, Louisa. I do not see the application 
of the remark." To do him justice he did not, at all. 

She passed it away with a slight motion of her hand, and con- 
centrating her attention upon him again, said, "Father, I have 
often thought that life is very short." — This was so distinctly one 
of his subjects that he interposed. 

"It is short, no doubt, my dear. Still, the average duration of 
human life is proved to have increased of late years. The calcula- 
tions of various life assurance and annuity offices, among other figures 
which cannot go wrong, have established the fact." 

" I speak of my own life, father." 

" indeed ? Still," said Mr. Gradgrind, " I need not point out 
to you, Louisa, that it is governed by the laws which govern lives 
in the aggregate." 

" While it lasts, I would wish to do the little I can, and the 
little I am fit for. What does it matter ? " 

Mr. Gradgrind seemed rather at a loss to understand the last 
four words; replying, "How, matter? What matter, my dear?" 

"Mr. Bounderby," she went on in a steady, straight way, with- 
out regarding this, "asks me to marry him. The question I have 
to ask myself is, shall I marry him ? That is so, father, is it not ? 
You have told me so, father. Have you not ? " 



HARD TIMES. 501 

" Certainly, my dear." 

"Let it be so. Since Mr. Bounderby likes to take me thus, I 
am satisfied to accept his proposal. Tell him, father, as soon as 
you please, that this was my answer. Repeat it, word for word, 
if you can, because I should wish him to know what I said." 

"It is quite right, my dear," retorted her father approvingly, 
"to be exact. I will observe your very proper request. Have 
you any wish in reference to the period of your marriage, my 
child?" 

" None, father. What does it matter ! " 

Mr. Gradgrind had drawn his chair a little nearer to her, and 
taken her hand. But, her repetition of these words seemed to strike 
with some little discord on his ear. He paused to look at her, and, 
still holding her hand, said : 

"Louisa, I have not considered it essential to ask you one ques- 
tion, because the possibility implied in it appeared to me to be too 
remote. But perhaps I ought to do so. You have never enter- 
tained in secret any other proposal ? " 

" Father," she returned, almost scornfully, " what other proposal 
can have been made to me ? Whom have I seen 1 Where have / 
been 1 What are my heart's experiences ? " 

" My dear Louisa," returned Mr. Gradgrind, reassured and satis- 
fied. " You correct me justly. I merely wished to discharge my 
duty." 

" What do / know, father," said Louisa in her quiet manner, 
" of tastes and fancies ; of aspirations and affections ; of all that 
part of my nature in which such light things might have been nour- 
ished? What escape have I had from problems that could be 
demonstrated, and realities that could be grasped?" As she said 
it, she unconsciously closed her hand, as if upon a solid object, and 
slowly opened it as though she were releasing dust or ash. 

" My dear," assented her eminently practical parent, "quite true, 
quite true." 

"Why, father," she pursued, "what a strange question to ask 
me/ The baby-preference that even I have heard of as common 
among children, has never had its innocent resting-place in my 
breast. You have been so careful of me, that I never had a 
child's heart. You have trained me so well, that I never dreamed 
a child's dream. You have dealt so wisely with me, father, from my 
cradle to this hour, that I never had a child's belief or a child's 
fear." 

Mr. Gradgrind was quite moved by his success, and by this tes- 
timony to it. "My dear Louisa," said he, "you abundantly repay 
my care. Kiss me, my dear girl." 



602 HAED TBIES. 

So, his daughter kissed him. Detaining her in his embrace, 
he said, " I may assure you now, my favourite child, that I am 
made happy by the sound decision at which you have arrived. 
^Ir. Bounderby is a very remarkable man ; and what little disparity 
can be said to exist between you — if any — is more than counter- 
balanced by the tone your miud has acquired. It has always been 
my object so to educate you, as that you might, while still in your 
eariy youth, be (if I may so express myself) almost any age. 
Kiss me once more, Louisa. Xow, let us go and find your mother. 

Accordingly, they went down to the di-awing-room, where the 
esteemed lady with no nonsense about her, was recumbent as 
usual, while Sissy worked beside her. She gave some feeble signs 
of reuiming animation when they entered, and presently the faint 
transparency was presented in a sitting attitude. 

'Olrs. G-radgrind," said her husband, who had waited for the 
achievement of this feat with some impatience, "allow me to pre- 
sent to you Mrs. Boimderby." 

" Oh ! ■■ said Mrs. Gradgrind, " so you have settled it ! Well, I'm 
sure I hope your health may be good, Louisa : for if your head 
begins to split as soon as you are married, which was the case with 
mine, I cannot consider that you are to be envied, though I have 
no doubt you think you are, as all girls do. However, I give you 
joy, my dear — and I hope you may now turn aU your ological stud- 
ies to good account, I am sure I do ! I must give you a kiss of 
congratulation, Louisa : but don't touch my right shoidder, for 
there's something running down it all day long. And now you 
see," whimpered ]\Irs. Gradgrind, adjusting her shawls after the 
affectionate ceremony, *' I shall be worrying myself, morning, noon, 
and night, to know what I am to call him ! " 

'''Sirs. Gradgrind,"' said her husband, solemnly, "what do you 
mean 1 " 

"TMiatever I am to call him, 'Sh. Gradgrind, when he is married 
to Louisa ! I must call him something. It's impossible," said 
Mrs. Gradgrind, with a mingled sense of politeness and injury, '* to 
be constantly addressing him and never giving him a name. I can- 
not call him Josiah, for the name is insupportable to me. You 
yourself wouldn't hear of Joe, you very well know. Am I to call 
my own son-in-law, Mister. Xot, I beUeve, unless the time has 
arrived when, as an invalid, I am to be trampled upon by my rela- 
tions. Then, what am I to call him ! " 

^N'obody present having any suggestion to offer in the remark- 
able emergency, 3Irs. Gradgrind departed this life for the time 
being, after delivering the following codicil to her remarks already- 
executed : 



HAED TIMES. 503 

" As to the wedding, all I ask, Louisa, is, — and I ask it with a 
fluttering in my chest, which actually extends to the soles of my 
feet, — that it may take place soon. Otherwise, I know it is one 
of those subjects I shall never hear the last of." 

When Mr. Gradgrind had presented Mrs. Bounderby, Sissy had 
suddenly turned her head, and looked, in wonder, in pity, in sorrow, 
in doubt, in a multitude of emotions, towards Louisa. Louisa had 
known it, and seen it, without looking at her. From that moment 
she was impassive, proud and cold — held Sissy at a distance — 
changed to her altogether. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

HUSBAND AND WIFE. 

Me. Bounderby's first disquietude on hearing of his happiness, 
was occasioned by the necessity of imparting it to Mrs. Sparsit. 
He could not make up his mind how to do that, or what the con- 
sequences of the step might be. Whether she would instantly 
depart, bag and baggage, to Lady Scadgers, or would positively 
refuse to budge from the premises ; whether she would be plaintive 
or abusive, tearful or tearing ; whether she would break her heart, 
or break the looking-glass ; Mr. Bounderby could not at all foresee. 
However, as it must be done, he had no choice but to do it ; so, 
after attempting several letters, and failing in them all, he resolved 
to do it by M^ord of mouth. 

On his way home, on the evening he set aside for this momen- 
tous purpose, he took the precaution of stepping into a chemist's 
shop and buying a bottle of the very strongest smelling-salts. 
" By George ! " said Mr. Bounderby, "if she takes it in the faint- 
ing way, I'll have the skin off her nose, at all events ! " But, in 
spite of being thus forearmed, he entered his own house with any- 
thing but a courageous air ; and appeared before the object of his 
misgivings, like a dog who was conscious of coming direct from the 
pantry. 

" Good evening, Mr. Bounderby ! " 

" Good evening, ma'am, good evening." He drew up his chair, 
and Mrs. Sparsit drew back hers, as who should say, "Your fire- 
side, sir. I freely admit it. It is for you to occupy it all, if you 
think proper." 

" Don't go to the North Pole, ma'am ! " said Mr. Boimderby. 

"Thank you, sir," said Mrs. Sparsit, and returned, though 
short of her former position. 



504 HARD TIMES. 

Mr. Bounderby sat looking at her, as, with the points of a stiff, 
sharp pair of scissors, she picked out holes for some inscrutable 
ornamental purpose, in a piece of cambric. An operation which, 
taken in connection with the bushy eyebrows and the Roman nose, 
suggested with some liveliness the idea of a hawk engaged upon the 
eyes of a tough little bird. She was so steadfastly occupied, that 
many minutes elapsed before she looked up from her work ; when 
she did so Mr. Bounderby bespoke her attention with a hitch of 
his head. 

"Mrs. Sparsit ma'am," said Mr. Bounderby, putting his hands 
in his pockets, and assuring himself with his right hand that the 
cork of the little bottle w^as ready for use, " I have no occasion to 
say to you, that you are not only a lady born and bred, but a devil- 
ish sensible woman." 

"Sir," returned the lady, "this is indeed not the first time that 
you have honoured me with similar expressions of your good 
opinion." 

"Mrs. Sparsit ma'am," said Mr. Bounderby, "I am going to 
astonish you." 

"Yes, sir?" returned Mrs. Sparsit, interrogatively, and in the 
most tranquil manner possible. She generally wore mittens, and 
she now laid down her work, and smoothed those mittens. 

" I am going, ma'am," said Bounderby, " to marry Tom Grad- 
grind's daughter." 

" Yes, sir," returned Mrs. Sparsit. " I hope you may be happy, 
Mr. Bounderby. Oh, indeed I hope you may be happy, sir ! " 
And she said it with such great condescension as well as with 
such great compassion for him, that Bounderby, — far more dis- 
concerted than if she had thrown her work-box at the mirror, or 
swooned on the hearth-rug, — corked up the smelling-salts tight 
in his pocket, and thought, " Now confound this woman, who 
could have ever guessed that she would take it in this way ! " 

" I wish with all my heart, sir," said Mrs. Sparsit, in a highly 
superior manner ; somehow she seemed in a moment, to have estab- 
lished a right to pity him ever afterwards ; " that you may be in 
all respects very happy." 

"Well, ma'am," returned Bounderby, with some resentment in 
his tone : which was clearly lowered, though in spite of himself, 
" I am obliged to you. I hope I shall be." 

"Z>o you, sir !" said Mrs. Sparsit, with great affability. "But 
naturally you do ; of course you do." 

A very awkward pause on Mr. Bounderby's part succeeded. 
Mrs. Sparsit sedately resumed her work and occasionally gave a 
small cough, which sounded like the cough of conscious strength 
and forbearance. 



HARD TIMES. 505 

"Well, ma'am," resumed Bounderby, "under these circum- 
stances, I imagine it would not be agreeable to a character like 
yours to remain here, though you would be very welcome here." 

"Oh, dear no, sir, I could on no account think of that ! " Mrs. 
Sparsit shook her head, still in her highly superior manner, and a 
little changed the small cough — coughing now, as if the spirit of 
prophecy rose within her, but had better be coughed down. 

" However, ma'am," said Bounderby, " there are apartments at 
the Bank, where a born and bred lady, as keeper of the place, 
would be rather a catch than otherwise ; and if the same terms — " 

"I beg your pardon, sir. You were so good as to promise that 
you would always substitute the phrase, annual compliment." 

" Well, ma'am, annual compliment. If the same annual compli- 
ment would be acceptable there, why, I see nothing to part us, 
unless you do." 

" Sir," returned Mrs. Sparsit. " The proposal is like yourself, 
and if the position I shall assume at the Bank is one that I could 
occupy without descending lower in the social scale " 

" Why, of course it is," said Bounderby. " If it was not, ma'am, 
you don't suppose that I should offer it to a lady who has moved 
in the society you have moved in. Not that / care for such 
society, you know ! But you do." 

"Mr. Bounderby, you are very considerate." 

" You'll have your own private apartments, and you'll have your 
coals and your candles, and all the rest of it, and you'U have your 
maid to attend upon you, and you'll have your light porter to pro- 
tect you, and you'll be what I take the liberty of considering 
precious comfortable," said Bounderby. 

"Sir," rejoined Mrs. Sparsit, "say no more. In yielding up my 
trust here, I shall not be freed from the necessity of eating the 
bread of dependence : " she might have said the sweetbread, for 
that delicate article in a savoury brown sauce was her favourite 
supper : " and I would rather receive it from your hand, than 
from any other. Therefore, sir, I accept your offer gratefully, and 
with many sincere acknowledgments for past favours. And I hope, 
sir," said Mrs. Sparsit, concluding in an impressively compassionate 
manner, "I fondly hope that Miss Gradgrind may be all you 
desire, and deserve ! " 

Nothing moved Mrs. Sparsit from that position any more. It 
was in vain for Bounderby to bluster or to assert himself in any 
of his explosive ways ; Mrs. Sparsit was resolved to have compas- 
sion on him, as a Victim. She was polite, obliging, cheerful, hope- 
ful ; but, the more polite, the more obliging, the more cheerful, 
the more hopeful, the more exemplary altogether, she ; the forlomer 



506 HARD TIMES. 

Sacrifice and Victim, he. She had that tenderness for his melan- 
choly fate, that his great red countenance used to break out into 
cold perspirations when she looked at him. 

Meanwhile the marriage was appointed to be solemnized in eight 
weeks' time, and Mr. Bounderby went every evening to Stone 
Lodge as an accepted wooer. Love was made on these occasions 
in the form of bracelets ; and, on all occasions during the period of 
betrothal, took a manufacturing aspect. Dresses were made, 
jewellery was made, cakes and gloves were made, settlements were 
made, and an extensive assortment of Facts did appropriate honour 
to the contract. The business was all Fact, from first to last. 
The Hours did not go through any of those rosy performances, 
which foolish poets have ascribed to them at such times; neither 
did the clocks go any faster, or any slower, than at other seasons. 
The deadly statistical recorder in the Gradgrind observatory knocked 
every second on the head as it was born, and buried it with his 
accustomed regularity. 

So the day came, as all other days come to people who ^vill only 
stick to reason ; and when it came, they were married in the church 
of the florid wooden legs — that popular order of architecture — 
Josiah Bounderby Esquire of Coketown, to Louisa eldest daughter 
of Thomas Gradgrind Esquire of Stone Lodge, M.P. for that 
borough. And when they were united in holy matrimony, they 
went home to breakfast at Stone Lodge aforesaid. 

There was an improving party assembled on the auspicious occa- 
sion, who knew what everything they had to eat and drink was 
made of, and how it was imported or exported, and in what quan- 
tities, and in what bottoms, whether native or foreign, and all about 
it. The bridesmaids, down to little Jane Gradgrind, were, in an 
intellectual point of view, fit helpmates for the calculating boy; 
and there was no nonsense about any of the company. 

After breakfast, the bridegi'oom addressed them in the following 
terms : 

" Ladies and gentlemen, I am Josiah Bounderby of Coketown. 
Since you have done my wife and myself the honour of drinking our 
healths and happiness, I suppose I must acknowledge the same ; 
though, as you all know me, and know what I am, and what my 
extraction was, you won't expect a speech from a man who, when he 
sees a Post, says ' that's a Post,' and when he sees a Pump, says 
'that's a Pump,' and is not to be got to call a Post a Pump, or a 
Pump a Post, or either of them a Toothpick. If you want a speech 
this morning, my friend and father-in-law, Tom Gradgrind, is a 
Member of Parliament, and you know where to get it. I am not 
your man. However, if I feel a little independent when I look 



HAKD TIMES. 507 

around this table to-day, and reflect how little I thought of marry- 
ing Tom Grradgrind's daughter when I was a ragged street-boy, who 
never washed his face unless it was at a pump, and that not oftener 
than once a fortnight, I hope I may be excused. So, I hope you 
like my feeling independent ; if you don't, I can't help it. I do 
feel independent. Now I have mentioned, and you have mentioned, 
that I am this day married to Tom Gradgrind's daughter. I am 
very glad to be so. It has long been my wish to be so. I have 
watched her bringing-up, and I believe she is worthy of me. At 
the same time — not to deceive you — I believe I am worthy of her. 
So, I thank you, on both our parts, for the good-will you have 
shown towards us ; and the best wish I can give the unmarried 
part of the present company, is this : I hope every bachelor may 
find as good a wife as I have found. And I hope every spinster 
may find as good a husband as my wife has found." 

Shortly after which oration, as they were going on a nuptial trip 
to Lyons, in order that Mr. Bounderby might take the opportunity 
of seeing how the Hands got on in those parts, and whether they, 
too, required to be fed with gold spoons ; the happy pair departed 
for the railroad. The Bride, in passing downstairs, dressed for her 
journey, found Tom waiting for her — flushed, either with his feel- 
ings or the vinous part of the breakfast. 

"What a game girl you are, to be such a first-rate sister. Loo !" 
whispered Tom. 

She clung to him as she should have clung to some far better 
nature that day, and was a little shaken in her reserved composure 
for the first time. 

" Old Bounderby 's quite ready," said Tom. "Time's up. Good 
bye ! I shall be on the look-out for you, when you come back. I 
say, my dear Loo ! An't it uncommonly jolly now ! " 



BOOK THE SECOND.— BUAFma. 
CHAPTER I. 

EFFECTS IN THE BANK. 

A SUNNY midsummer day. There was such a thing sometimes, 
even in Coketown. 

Seen from a distance in such weather, Coketown lay shrouded 
in a haze of its own, which appeared impervious to the sun's rays. 
You only knew the town was there, because you knew there could 
have been no such sulky blotch upon the prospect without a town. 
A blur of soot and smoke, now confusedly tending this way, now 
that way, now aspiring to the vault of Heaven, now murkily creep- 
ing along the earth, as the wind rose and fell, or changed its quar- 
ter : a dense formless jumble, with sheets of cross light in it, that 
showed nothing but masses of darkness : — Coketown in the dis- 
tance was suggestive of itself, though not a brick of it could be 
seen. 

The wonder was, it was there at all. It had been ruined so 
often, that it was amazing how it had borne so many shocks. 
Surely there never was such fragile china-ware as that of which the 
millers of Coketo^^n were made. Handle them never so lightly, 
and they fell to pieces with such ease that you might suspect them 
of having been flawed before. They were ruined, when they were 
required to send labouring children to school ; they were ruined, 
when inspectors were appointed to look into their works ; they 
were ruined, when such inspectors considered it doubtful whether 
they were quite justified in chopping people up with their machin- 
ery ; they were utterly undone, when it was hinted that perhaps 
they need not always make quite so much smoke. Besides Mr. 
Bounderby's gold spoon which was generally received in Coketown, 
another prevalent fiction was very popular there. It took the form 
of a threat. Whenever a Coketowner felt he was ill-used — that 
is to say, whenever he was not left entirely alone, and it was pro- 
posed to hold him accountable for the consequences of any of his 

508 



HAKD TIMES. 609 

acts — he was sure to come out with the awful menace, that he 
would " sooner pitch his property into the Atlantic." This had 
terrified the Home Secretary within an inch of his life, on several 
occasions. 

However, the Coketo^vners were so patriotic after all, that they 
never had pitched their property into the Atlantic yet, but, on the 
contrary, had been kind enough to take mighty good care of it. 
So there it was, in the haze yonder; and it increased and 
multiplied. 

The streets were hot and dusty on the summer day, and the sun 
was so bright that it even shone through the heavy vapour droop- 
ing over Coketown, and could not be looked at steadily. Stokers 
emerged from low underground doorways into factory yards, and 
sat on steps, and posts, and palings, wiping their swarthy visages, 
and contemplating coals. The whole toAvn seemed to be frying in 
oil. There was a stifling smell of hot oil everywhere. The steam- 
engines shone with it, the dresses of the Hands were soiled with 
it, the mills throughout their many stories oozed and trickled it. 
The atmosphere of those Fairy palaces was like the breath of the 
simoom : and their inhabitants, wasting with heat, toiled lang-uidly 
in the desert. But no temperature made the melancholy mad ele- 
phants more mad or more sane. Their wearisome heads went up 
and down at the same rate, in hot weather and cold, wet weather 
and dry, fair weather and foul. The measured motion of their shad- 
ows on the walls, was the substitute Coketown had to show for 
the shadows of rusthng woods; while, for the summer hum of 
insects, it could offer, all the year round, from the dawn of Mon- 
day to the night of Satiurday, the whirr of shafts and wheels. 

Drowsily they whirred all through this sunny day, making the 
passenger more sleepy and more hot as he passed the humming 
walls of the mills. Sun-blinds, and sprinklings of water, a little 
cooled the main streets and the shops; but the mills, and the 
courts and alleys, baked at a fierce heat. Down upon the river 
that was black and thick with dye, some Coketown boys who were 
at large — a rare sight there — rowed a crazy boat, which made a 
spumous track upon the water as it jogged along, while eYery dip 
of an oar stirred up vile smells. But the sun itself, however benefi- 
cent, generally, was less kind to Coketown than hard frost, and 
rarely looked intently into any of its closer regions without engen- 
dering more death than life. So does the eye of Heaven itself 
become an evil eye, when incapable or sordid hands are interposed 
between it and the things it looks upon to bless. 

Mrs. Sparsit sat in her afternoon apartment at the Bank, on the 
shadier side of the frying street. Office-hours were over : and at 



510 HARD TIMES. 

that period of the day, in warm weather, she usually embellished 
with her genteel presence, a managerial board-room over the public 
office. Her own private sitting-room was a story higher, at the 
^dndow of which post of observation she was ready, every morning, 
to greet Mr. Bounderby, as he came across the road, with the sym- 
pathising recognition appropriate to a Victim. He had been mar- 
ried now a year ; and Mrs. Sparsit had never released him from 
her determined pity a moment. 

The Bank offered no violence to the wholesome monotony of the 
town. It was another red brick house, with black outside shut- 
ters, green inside blinds, a black street-door up two white steps, 
a brazen door-plate, and a brazen door-handle full stop. It was a 
size larger than Mr. Bounderby's house, as other houses were from 
a size to half a dozen sizes smaller ; in all other particulars, it was 
strictly according to pattern. 

Mrs. Sparsit was conscious that by coming in the evening-tide 
among the desks and writing implements, she shed a feminine, not 
to say also aristocratic, grace upon the office. Seated, with her 
needlework or netting apparatus, at the window, she had a self- 
laudatory sense of correcting, by her ladylike deportment, the rude 
business aspect of the place. With this impression of her interest- 
ing character upon her, Mrs. Sparsit considered herself, in some 
sort, the Bank Fairy. The townspeople who, in their passing and 
repassing, saw her there, regarded her as the Bank Dragon keeping 
watch over the treasures of the mine. 

What those treasures were, Mrs. Sparsit knew as little as they 
did. Gold and silver coin, precious paper, secrets that if divulged 
would bring vague destruction upon vague persons (generally, how- 
ever, people whom she disliked), were the chief items in her ideal 
catalogue thereof. For the rest, she knew that after office-hours, 
she reigned supreme over all the office furniture, and over a locked-up 
iron room mth three locks, against the door of which strong cham- 
ber the light porter laid his head every night, on a truckle bed, 
that disappeared at cockcrow. Further, she was lady paramount 
over certain vaults in the basement, sharply spiked off from com- 
munication with the predatory world ; and over the relics of the 
current day's work, consisting of blots of ink, worn-out pens, frag- 
ments of wafers, and scraps of paper torn so small, that nothing 
interesting could ever be deciphered on them when Mrs. Sparsit 
tried. Lastly, she was guardian over a little armoury of cutlasses 
and carbines, arrayed in vengeful order above one of the official 
chimney-pieces ; and over that respectable tradition never to be 
separated from a place of business claiming to be wealthy — a row 
of fire-buckets — vessels calculated to be of no physical utility on 



HARD TIMES. 511 

any occasion, but observed to exercise a fine moral influence, almost 
equal to bullion, on most beholders. 

A deaf serving-woman and a light porter completed Mrs. Spar- 
sit's empire. The deaf serving-woman was rumoured to be wealthy ; 
and a saying had for years gone about among the lower orders of 
Coketown, that she would be murdered some night when the Bank 
was shut, for the sake of her money. It was generally consid- 
ered, indeed, that she had been due some time, and ought to have 
fallen long ago ; but she had kept her life, and her situation, 
with an ill-conditioned tenacity that occasioned much offence and 
disappointment. 

Mrs. Sparsit's tea was just set for her on a pert little table, with 
its tripod of legs in an attitude, which she insinuated after office- 
hours, into the company of the stern, leathern-topped, long board- 
table that bestrode the middle of the room. The light porter 
placed the tea-tray on it, knuckling his forehead as a form of 
homage, 

" Thank you, Bitzer," said Mrs. Sparsit. ■ 

"Thank you^ ma'am," returned the light porter. He was a 
very light porter indeed ; as light as in the days when he blink- 
ingly defined a horse, for girl number twenty. 

"All is shut up, Bitzer?" said Mrs. Sparsit. 

"All is shut up, ma'am." 

" And what," said Mrs, Sparsit, pouring out her tea, " is the 
news of the day ? Anything % " 

" Well, ma'am, I can't say that I have heard anything particu- 
lar. Our people are a bad lot, ma'am; but that is no news, 
unfortunately," 

"What are the restless wretches doing now?" asked Mrs, 
Sparsit. 

" Merely going on in the old way, ma'am. Uniting, and 
leaguing, and engaging to stand by one another." 

"It is much to be regretted," said Mrs. Sparsit, making her 
nose more Roman and her eyebrows more Coriolanian in the strength 
of her severity, " that the united masters allow of any such class- 
combinations." 

"Yes, ma'am," said Bitzer. 

" Being united themselves, they ought one and all to set their 
faces against employing any man who is united with any other 
man," said Mrs. Sparsit. 

" They have done that, ma'am," returned Bitzer; "but it rather 
fell through, ma'am." 

" I do not pretend to understand these things," said Mrs. Spar- 
sit, with dignity, " my lot having been signally cast in a widely 



512 HARD TIMES. 

different sphere ; and Mr. Sparsit, as a Powler, being also quite out 
of the pale of any such dissensions. I only know that these people 
must be conquered, and that it's high time it was done, once for all." 

"Yes, ma'am," returned Bitzer, with a demonstration of great 
respect for Mrs. Sparsit's oracular authority. " You couldn't put 
it clearer, I am sure, ma'am." 

As this was his usual hour for having a little confidential chat 
with Mrs. Sparsit, and as he had already caught her eye and seen 
that she was going to ask him something, he made a pretence of 
arranging the rulers, inkstands, and so forth, while that lady went 
on with her tea, glancing through the open window, down into 
the street. 

" Has it been a busy day, Bitzer ? " asked Mrs. Sparsit. 

" Not a very busy day, my lady. About an average day." He 
now and then slided into my lady, instead of ma'am, as an invol- 
untary acknowledgment of Mrs. Sparsit's personal dignity and 
claims to reverence. 

"The clerks," said Mrs. Sparsit, carefully brushing an impercep- 
tible crumb of bread and butter from her left-hand mitten, " are 
trustworthy, punctual, and industrious, of course ? " 

"Yes, ma'am, pretty fair, ma'am. With the usual exception." 

He held the respectable office of general spy and informer in the 
establishment, for which volunteer service he received a present 
at Christmas, over and above his weekly wage. He had grown 
into an extremely clear-headed, cautious, prudent young man, who 
was safe to rise in the world. His mind was so exactly regulated, 
that he had no affections or passions. All his proceedings were 
the result of the nicest and coldest calculation; and it was not 
without cause that Mrs. Sparsit habitually observed of him, that 
he was a young man of the steadiest principle she had ever kno^Am. 
Having satisfied himself, on his father's death, that his mother 
had a right of settlement in Coketown, this young economist had 
asserted that right for her with such a steadfast adherence to the 
principle of the case, that she had been shut up in the workhouse 
ever since. It must be admitted that he allowed her half a pound 
of tea a year, which was weak in him : first, because all gifts have 
an inevitable tendency to pauperise the recipient, and secondly, 
because his only reasonable transaction in that commodity would 
have been to buy it for as little as he could possibly give, and sell 
it for as much as he could possibly get ; it having been clearly 
ascertained by philosophers that in this is comprised the whole 
duty of man — not a part of man's duty, but the whole. 

"Pretty fair, ma'am. With the usual exception, ma'am," re- 
peated Bitzer. 



HARD TIMES. 513 

" Ah — h ! " said Mrs. Sparsit, shaking her head over her tea- 
cup, and taking a long gulp. 

" Mr. Thomas, ma'am, I doubt Mr. Thomas very much, ma'am, 
I don't hke his ways at all." 

"Bitzer," said Mrs. Sparsit, in a very impressive manner, "do 
you recollect my having said anything to you respecting names 1 " 

"I beg j^our pardon, ma'am. It's quite true that you did 
object to names being used, and they're always best avoided." 

"Please to remember that I have a charge here," said Mrs. Spar- 
sit, with her air of state. " I hold a trust here, Bitzer, under Mr. 
Bounderby. However improbable both Mr. Bounderby and myself 
might have deemed it years ago, that he would ever become my 
patron, making me an annual compliment, I cannot but regard 
him in that light. From Mr. Bounderby I have received every 
acknowledgment of my social station, and every recognition of my 
family descent, that I could possibly expect. More, far more. 
Therefore, to my patron I will be scrupulously true. And I do 
not consider, I will not consider, I cannot consider," said Mrs. 
Sparsit, with a most extensive stock on hand of honour and moral- 
ity, "that I should be scnipulously true, if I allowed names to be 
mentioned under this roof, that are unfortunately — most unfortu- 
nately — no doubt of that — connected with his." 

Bitzer knuckled his forehead again, and again begged pardon. 

"Xo, Bitzer," continued Mrs. Sparsit, "say an individual, and 
I will hear you; say Mr. Thomas, and you must excuse me." 

"With the usual exception, ma'am," said Bitzer, trjang back, 
"of an individual." 

"Ah — h ! " Mrs. Sparsit repeated the ejaculation, the shake of 
the head over her tea-cup, and the long gulp, as taking up the 
conversation again at the point where it had been interrupted. 

"An individual, ma'am," said Bitzer, "has never been what he 
ought to have been, since he first came into the place. He is a 
dissipated, extravagant idler. He is not worth his salt, ma'am. 
He wouldn't get it either, if he hadn't a friend and relation at 
court, ma'am ! " 

" Ah — h ! " said Mrs. Sparsit, with another melancholy shake 
of her head. 

" I only hope, ma'am," pursued Bitzer, " that his friend and rela- 
tion may not supply him ^dth the means of carrjnng on. Other- 
-^ise, ma'am, we know out of whose pocket that money comes." 

" Ah — h ! " sighed Mrs. Sparsit again, with another melancholy 
shake of her head. 

" He is to be pitied, ma'am. The last party I have alluded to, 
is to be pitied, ma'am," said Bitzer. 



514 HARD TIMES. 

"Yes, Bitzer," said Mrs. Sparsit. "I have always pitied the 
delusion, always." 

"As to an individual, ma'am," said Bitzer, dropping his voice 
and drawing nearer, "he is as improvident as any of the people in 
this town. And you know what their improvidence is, ma'am. 
No one could wish to know it better than a lady of your eminence 
does." 

" They would do well," returned Mrs. Sparsit, " to take example 
by you, Bitzer." 

" Thank you, ma'am. But, since you do refer to me, now look 
at me, ma'am. I have put by a little, ma'am, already. That 
gratuity which I receive at Christmas, ma'am : I never touch it. 
I don't even go the length of my wages, though they're not high, 
ma'am. Why can't they do as I have done, ma'am 1 What one 
person can do, another can do." 

This, again, was among the fictions of Coketown. Any capitalist 
there, who had made sixty thousand pounds out of sixpence, always 
professed to wonder why the sixty thousand nearest Hands didn't 
each make sixty thousand pounds out of sixpence, and more or less 
reproached them every one for not accomplishing the little feat. 
What I did you can do. Why don't you go and do it ? 

"As to their wanting recreations, ma'am," said Bitzer, "it's stuff 
and nonsense. / don't want recreations. I never did, and I 
never shall : I don't like 'em. As to their combining together ; 
there are many of them, I have no doubt, that by watching and 
informing upon one another could earn a trifle now and then, 
whether in money or good will, and improve their livelihood. 
Then, why don't they improve it, ma'am ! It's the first con- 
sideration of a rational creature, and it's what they pretend to 
want." 

" Pretend indeed ! " said Mrs. Sparsit. 

" I am sure we are constantly hearing, ma'am, till it becomes 
quite nauseous, concerning their wives and families," said Bitzer. 
" Why look at me, ma'am ! / don't want a wife and family. 
Why should they?" 

" Because they are improvident," said Mrs. Sparsit. 

"Yes, ma'am," returned Bitzer, "that's where it is. If they 
were more provident and less perverse, ma'am, what would they 
do ? They would say, ' While my hat covers my family,' or ' while 
my bonnet covers my family,' — as the case might be, ma'am — 
' I have only one to feed, and that's the person I most like to 
feed.' " ' 

"To be sure," assented Mrs. Sparsit, eating muffin. 

" Thank you, ma'am," said Bitzer, knuckling his forehead again, 



HARD TIMES. 615 

in return for the favour of Mrs. Sparsit's improving conversation. 
"Would you wish a little more hot water, ma'am, or is there any- 
thing else I could fetch you ? " 
" Nothing just now, Bitzer." 

" Thank you, ma'am. I shouldn't wish to disturb you at your 
meals, ma'am, particularly tea, knowing your partiality for it," 
said Bitzer, craning a little to look over into the street from where 
he stood ; " but there's a gentleman been looking up here for a 
minute or so, ma'am, and he has come across as if he was going to 
; knock. That is his knock, ma'am, no doubt." 
; He stepped to the window ; and looking out, and drawing in 

■ his head again, confirmed himself with, "Yes, ma'am. Would you, 
; wish the gentleman to be shown in, ma'am 1 " 
[ "I don't know who it can be," said Mrs. Sparsit, wiping her 

; ' mouth and arranging her mittens. 
; "A stranger, ma'am, evidently." 

i "What a stranger can want at the Bank at this time of the 

\ evening, unless he comes upon some business for which he is too 
\ late,- 1 don't know," said Mrs. Sparsit, "but I hold a charge in 
i. this establishment from Mr. Bounderby, and I will never shrink 
; from it. If to see him is any part of the duty I have accepted, I 
will see him. Use your own discretion, Bitzer." 

Here the visitor, all unconscious of Mrs. Sparsit's magnanimous 
words, repeated his knock so loudly that the light porter hastened 
down to open the door ; while Mrs. Sparsit took the precaution of 
concealing her little table, with all its appliances upon it, in a 
cupboard, and then decamped upstairs, that she might appear, if 
needful, with the greater dignity. 

" If you please, ma'am, the gentleman would wish to see you," 
said Bitzer, with his light eye at Mrs. Sparsit's keyhole. So, Mrs. 
Sparsit, who had improved the interval by touching up her cap, 
took her classical features downstairs again, and entered the board- 
room in the manner of a Roman matron going outside the city 
walls to treat with an invading general. 

The visitor having strolled to the window, and being then 
engaged in looking , carelessly out, was as unmoved by this impres- 
sive entry as man could possibly be. He stood whistling to him- 
self with all imaginable coolness, with his hat still on, and a certain 
air of exhaustion upon him, in part arising from excessive summer, 
and in part from excessive gentility. For it was to be seen with 
^ half an eye that he was a thorough gentleman, made to the model 
■ of the time ; weary of everything, and putting no more faith in 
anything than Lucifer. 

" I believe, sir," quoth Mrs. Sparsit, "you wished to see me." 



516 HARD TIMES. 

"I beg your pardon," he said, turning and removing his hat; 
"pray excuse me." 

" Humph ! " thought Mrs. Sparsit, as she made a stately bend. 
" Five-and- thirty, good-looking, good figure, good teeth, good voice, 
good breeding, well-dressed, dark hair, bold eyes." All which Mrs. 
Sparsit observed in her womanly way — like the Sultan who put 
his head in the pail of water — merely in dipping down and com- 
ing up again. 

" Please to be seated, sir," said Mrs. Sparsit. 

" Thank you. Allow me." He placed a chair for her, but 
remained himself carelessly lounging against the table. " I left my 
servant at the railway looking after the luggage — veiy heavy 
train and vast quantity of it in the van — and strolled on, looking 
about me. Exceedingly odd place. Will you allow me to ask you 
if it's always, as black as this % " 

" In general much blacker," returned Mrs. Sparsit, in her uncom- 
promising way, 

"Is it possible ! Excuse me : you are not a native, I think % " 

" No, sir," returned Mrs. Sparsit. " It was once my good or ill 
fortune, as it may be — before I became a widow — to move in a 
very different sphere. My husband was a Powler." 

" Beg your pardon, really ! " said the stranger. " Was — ? " 

Mrs. Sparsit repeated, " A Powler." 

"Powler Family," said the stranger, after reflecting a few 
moments. Mrs. Sparsit signified assent. The stranger seemed a 
little more fatigued than before. 

" You must be very much bored here ? " was the inference he drew 
from the communication. 

"I am the servant of circumstances, sir," said Mrs. Sparsit, 
" and I have long adapted myself to the governing power of my 
life." 

"Very philosophical," returned the stranger, "and very exem- 
plary and laudable, and — " It seemed to be scarcely worth his 
while to finish the sentence, so he played with his watch-chain 
wearily. 

"May I be permitted to ask, sir," said Mrs. Sparsit, "to what 
I am indebted for the favour of — " 

" Assuredly," said the stranger. " Much obliged to you for 
reminding me. I am the bearer of a letter of introduction to Mr. 
Bounderby the banker. Walking through this extraordinary black 
town, while they were getting dinner ready at the hotel, I asked a 
fellow whom I met ; one of the working people ; who appeared to 
have been taking a shower-bath of something fluffy, which I assume 
to be the raw material — " 



HARD TIMES. 617 

Mrs. Sparsit inclined her head. 

" — Raw material — where Mr. Bounderby, the banker, might 
reside. Upon which, misled no doubt by the word Banker, he 
directed me to the Bank. — Fact being, I presume, that Mr. 
Bounderby the Banker, does not reside in the edifice in which I 
have the honour of ojffering this explanation?" 

"Xo, sir," returned Mrs. Sparsit, "he does not." 

" Thank you. I had no intention of delivering my letter at the 
present moment, nor have I. But strolling on to the Bank to kill 
time, and having the good fortune to observe at the window," 
towards which he languidly waved his hand, then slightly bowed, 
" a lady of a verj^ superior and agreeable appearance, I considered that 
I could not do better than take the liberty of asking that lady 
where Mr. Bounderby the Banker does, live. Which I accordingly 
venture, with all suitable apologies, to do." 

The inattention and inclolence of his manner were sufficiently 
relieved, to Mrs, Sparsit's thinking, by a certain gallantry at ease, 
which offered her homage too. Here he was, for instance, at this 
moment, all but sitting on the table, and yet lazily bending over 
her, as if he acknowledged an attraction in her that made her 
charming — in her way. 

" Banks, I know, are always suspicious, and officially must be," 
said the stranger, whose lightness and smoothness of speech were 
pleasant hkewise ; suggesting matter far more sensible and humor- 
ous than it ever contained — which was perhaps a shrewd device 
of the founder of this numerous sect, whosoever may have been 
that great man: "therefore I may observe that my letter — here 
it is — is from the member for this place — Gradgrind — whom I 
have had the pleasure of knowing in London." 

Mrs. Sparsit recog-nised the hand, intimated that such confirma- 
tion was quite unnecessary, and gave Mr. Bounderby's address, with 
all needful clues and directions in aid. 

"Thousand thanks," said the stranger. "Of course you know 
the Banker well % " 

"Yes, sir," rejoined Mrs. Sparsit. "In my dependent relation 
towards him, I have kno^n him ten years." 

" Quite an eternity ! I think he married Gradgrind's daughter ? " 

"Yes," said Mrs. Sparsit, suddenly compressing her mouth, "he 
had that — honour." 

" The lady is quite a philosopher, I am told % " 

"Indeed, sir," said Mrs. Sparsit. "/s she?" 

"Excuse my impertinent curiosity," pursued the stranger, flutter- 
ing over Mrs. Sparsit's eyebrows, with a propitiatory air, "but you 
know the family, and know the world. I am about to know the 



518 HARD TIMES. 

family, and may have much to do with them. Is the lady so very 
alarming ? Her father gives her such a portentously hard-headed 
reputation, that I have a burning desire to know. Is she absolutely 
unapproachable? Repellently and stunningly clever? I see, by 
your meaning smile, you think not. You have poured balm into 
my anxious soul. As to age, now. Forty ! Five-and-thirty ? " 

Mrs. Sparsit laughed outright. "A chit," said she. "Not 
twenty when she was married." 

"I give you my honour, Mrs. Powler," returned the stranger, 
detaching himself from the table, "that I never was so astonished 
in my life ! " 

It really did seem to impress him, to the utmost extent of his 
capacity of being impressed. He looked at his informant for ftill 
a quarter of a minute, and appeared to have the surprise in his 
mind aU the time. "I assure you, Mrs. Powler," he then said, 
much exhausted, " that the father's manner prepared me for a grim 
and stony maturity. I am obliged to you, of all things, for correct- 
ing so absurd a mistake. Pray excuse my intrusion. Many thanks. 
Good day ! " 

He bowed himself out ; and Mrs. Sparsit, hiding in the window 
curtain, saw him languishing down the street on the shady side of 
the way, observed of all the town. 

"What do you think of the gentleman, Bitzer?" she asked the 
light porter, when he came to take away. 

" Spends a deal of money on his dress, ma'am." 

"It must be admitted," said Mrs. Sparsit, "that it's very 
tasteful." 

"Yes, ma'am," returned Bitzer, "if that's worth the money." 

"Besides which, ma'am," resumed Bitzer, while he was polishing 
the table, "he looks to me as if he gamed." 

"It's immoral to game," said Mrs. Sparsit. 

"It's ridiculous, ma'am," said Bitzer, "because the chances are 
against the players." 

Whether it was that the heat prevented Mrs. Sparsit from work- 
ing, or whether it was that her hand was out, she did no work that 
night. She sat at the window, when the sun began to sink behind 
the smoke ; she sat there, when the smoke was burning red, when 
the colour faded from it, when darkness seemed to rise slowly out 
of the ground, and creep upward, upward, up to the house-tops, up 
the church steeple, up to the summits of the factory chimneys, up 
to the sky. Without a candle in the room, Mrs. Sparsit sat at the 
window, with her hands before her, not thinking much of the sounds 
of evening ; the whooping of boys, the barking of dogs, the rum- 
bling of wheels, the steps and voices of passengers, the shrill street 



HARD TIMES. 519 

cries, the clogs upon the pavement when it was their hour for going 
by, the shutting-up of shop-shutters. Not until the light porter 
announced that her nocturnal sweetbread was ready, did Mrs. 
Sparsit arouse herself from her reverie, and convey her dense black 
eyebrows — by that time creased with meditation, as if they needed 
ironing out — upstairs. 

" 0, you Fool ! " said Mrs. Sparsit, when she was alone at her 
supper. Whom she meant, she did not say ; but she could scarcely 
have meant the sweetbread. 



CHAPTER II. 

MR. JAMES HARTHOUSE. 

The Gradgrind party wanted assistance in cutting the throats of 
the Graces. They Avent about recruiting ; and where could they 
enlist recruits more hopefully, than among the fine gentlemen 
who, having found out everything to be worth nothing, were 
equally ready for anything? 

Moreover, the healthy spirits who had mounted to this sublime 
height were attractive to many of the Gradgrind school. They 
liked fine gentlemen; they pretended that they did not, but 
they did. They became exhausted in imitation of them; and 
they yaw-yawed in their speech like them ; and they served out, 
Avith an enervated air, the little mouldy rations of political econ- 
omy, on which they regaled their disciples. There never before was 
seen on earth such a wonderful hybrid race as was thus produced. 

Among the fine gentlemen not regularly belonging to the Grad- 
grind school, there was one of a good family and a better appear- 
ance, with a happy turn of humour which had told immensely 
with the House of Commons on the occasion of his entertaining it 
with his (and the Board of Directors') view of a railway accident, 
in which the most careful officers ever known, employed by the 
most liberal managers ever heard of, assisted by the finest mechani- 
cal contrivances ever devised, the whole in action on the best line 
ever constructed, had killed five people and wounded thirty-two, 
by a casualty without which the excellence of the whole system 
would have been positively incomplete. Among the slain was a cow, 
and among the scattered articles unowned, a widow's cap. And the 
honourable member had so tickled the House (which has a deli- 
cate sense of humour) by putting the cap on the cow, that it 
became impatient of any serious reference to the Coroner's Inquest, 
and brought the railway off with Cheers and Laughter. 

Now, this gentleman had a younger brother of still better 



520 HAED TIMES. 

appearance than himself, who had tried life as a Comet of Dra- 
goons, and found it a bore; and had afterwards tried it in the 
train of an English minister abroad, and found it a bore ; and had 
then strolled to Jerusalem, and got bored there; and had then 
gone yachting about the world, and got bored everywhere. To 
whom this honourable and jocular member fraternally said one 
day, "Jem, there's a good opening among the hard Fact fellows, 
and they want men. I wonder you don't go in for statistics." 
Jem, rather taken by the novelty of the idea, and very hard up 
for a change, was as ready to " go in " for statistics as for any- 
thing else. So, he went in. He coached himself up with a blue 
book or two ; and his brother put it about among the hard Fact 
fellows, and said, " If you want to bring in, for any place, a hand- 
some dog who can make you a devilish good speech, look after my 
brother Jem, for he's your man." After a few dashes in the pub- 
lic meeting way, Mr. Gradgrind and a council of political sages 
approved of Jem, and it was resolved to send him down to Coke- 
town, to become known there and in the neighbourhood. Hence 
the letter Jem had last night shown to Mrs. Sparsit, which Mr. 
Bounderby now held in his hand; superscribed, "Josiah Boun- 
derby. Esquire, Banker, Coketown. Specially to introduce James 
Harthouse, Esquire. Thomas Gradgrind." 

Within an hour of the receipt of this despatch and Mr. James 
Harthouse's card, Mr. Bounderby put on his hat and went down to 
the Hotel. There he found Mr. James Harthouse looking out of 
window, in a state of mind so disconsolate, that he was already 
half disposed to "go in" for something else. 

"My name, sir," said his visitor, "is Josiah Bounderby, of 
Coketown." 

Mr. James Harthouse was very happy indeed (though he 
scarcely looked so), to have a pleasure he had long expected. 

"Coketown, sir," said Bounderby, obstinately taking a chair, 
" is not the kind of place you have been accustomed to. There- 
fore, if you will allow me — or whether you will or not, for I am 
a plain man — I'll tell you something about it before we go any 
further." 

Mr. Harthouse would be charmed. 

" Don't be too sure of that," said Bounderby. " I don't promise 
it. First of all, jou see our smoke. That's meat and drink to us. 
It's the healthiest thing in the world in all respects, and partic- 
ularly for the lungs. If you are one of those who want us to con- 
sume it, I differ from you. We are not going to wear the bottoms 
of our boilers out any faster than we wear 'em out now, for all the 
humbugging sentiment in Great Britain and Ireland." 



HARD TIMES. 521 

By way of "going in" to the fullest extent, Mr. Harthouse 
rejoined, "Mr. Bounderby, I assure you I am entirely and com- 
pletely of your way of thinking. On conviction." 

"I am glad to hear it," said Bounderby. "Now, you have 
heard a lot of talk about the work in our mills, no doubt. You 
have? Very good. I'll state the fact of it to you. It's the 
pleasantest work there is, and it's the lightest work there is, and 
it's the best paid work there is. More than that, we couldn't 
improve the mills themselves, unless we laid down Turkey carpets 
on the floors. Which we're not a going to do." 

"Mr. Bounderby, perfectly right." 

" Lastly," said Bounderby, "as to our Hands. There's not a 
Hand in this town, sir, man, woman, or child, but has one ulti- 
mate object in life. That object is, to be fed on turtle soup and 
venison ^^dth a gold spoon. Now, they're not a going — none of 
'em — ever to be fed on turtle soup and venison with a gold spoon. 
And now you know the place." 

Mr. Harthouse professed himself in the highest degree instructed 
and refreshed, by this condensed epitome of the whole Coketown 
question. 

"Wliy, you see," replied Mr. Bounderby, "it suits my dispo- 
sition to have a full understanding with a man, particularly with 
a public man, when I make his acquaintance. I have only one 
thing more to say to you, Mr. Harthouse, before assuring you of 
the pleasure with which I shall respond, to the utmost of my poor 
ability, to my friend Tom Grradgrind's letter of introduction. You 
are a man of family. Don't you deceive yourself by supposing for 
a moment that I am a man of family. I am a bit of dirty riff-raff, 
and a genuine scrap of tag, rag, and bobtail." 

If anything could have exalted Jem's interest in Mr. Boun- 
derby, it would have been this very circumstance. Or, so he told 
him. 

"So now," said Bounderby, "we may shake hands on equal 
terms. I say, equal terms, because although I know what I am, 
and the exact depth of the gutter I have lifted myself out of, 
better than any man does, I am as proud as you are. I am just 
as proud as you are. Having now asserted my independence in a 
proper manner, I may come to how do you find yourself, and I hope 
you're pretty well." 

The better, Mr. Harthouse gave him to understand as they 
shook hands, for the salubrious air of Coketown. Mr. Bounderby 
received the answer with favour. 

"Perhaps you know," said he, "or perhaps you don't know, I 
married Tom Gradgrind's daughter. If you have nothing better 



622 HARD TIMES. 

to do than to walk up-town with me, I shall be glad to introduce 
you to Tom Gradgrind's daughter." 

" Mr. Bounderby," said Jem, "you anticipate my dearest wishes." 

They went out without further discourse ; and Mr. Bounderby 
piloted the new acquaintance who so strongly contrasted with him, 
to the private red brick dwelling, with the black outside shutters, 
the green inside blinds, and the black street door up the two white 
steps. In the drawing-room of which mansion, there presently 
entered to them the most remarkable girl Mr. James Harthouse 
had ever seen. She was so constrained, and yet so careless; so 
reserved, and yet so watchful ; so cold and proud, and yet so sensi- 
tively ashamed of her husband's braggart humility — from which 
she shrunk as if every example of it were a cut or a blow ; that it 
was quite a new sensation to observe her. In face she was no less 
remarkable than in manner. Her features were handsome, but 
their natural play was so locked up, that it seemed impossible to 
guess at their genuine expression. Utterly indifferent, perfectly 
self-reliant, never at a loss, and yet never at her ease, with her 
figure in company with them there, and her mind apparently quite 
alone — it was of no use "going in" yet awhile to comprehend 
this girl, for she baffled all penetration. 

From the mistress of the house, the visitor glanced to the house 
itself. There was no mute sign of a woman in the room. No 
graceful little adornment, no fanciful little device, however trivial, 
anywhere expressed her influence. Cheerless and comfortless, 
boastfully and doggedly rich, there the room stared at its present 
occupants, unsoftened and unrelieved by the least trace of any 
womanly occupation. As Mr. Bounderby stood in the midst of 
his household gods, so those unrelenting divinities occupied their 
places around Mr. Bounderby, and they were worthy of one another, 
and well matched. 

"This, sir," said Bounderby, "is my wife, Mrs. Bounderby: 
Tom Gradgrind's eldest daughter. Loo, Mr. James Harthouse. 
Mr. Harthouse has joined your father's muster-roll. If he is not 
Tom Gradgrind's colleague before long, I believe we shall at least 
hear of him in connection with one of our neighbouring towns. 
You observe, Mr. Harthouse, that my wife is my junior. I don't 
know what she saw in me to marry me, but she saw something in 
me, I suppose, or she wouldn't have married me. She has lots of 
expensive knowledge, sir, political and otherwise. If you want to 
cram for anything, I should be troubled to recommend you to a 
better adviser than Loo Bounderby." 

To a more agreeable adviser, or one from whom he would be 
more likely to learn, Mr. Harthouse could never be recommended. 



HAKD TIMES. 523 

" Come ! " said his host. " If you're in the complimentary 
line, you'll get on here, for you'll meet with no competition. I 
have never been in the way of learning compliments myself, and I 
don't profess to understand the art of paying 'em. In fact, despise 
'em. But, your bringing-up was different from mine ; mine was a 
real thing, by George ! You're a gentleman, and I don't pretend 
to be one. I am Josiah Bounderby of Coketown, and that's 
enough for me. However, though I am not influenced by manners 
and station. Loo Bounderby may be. She hadn't my advantages 
— disadvantages you would call 'em, but I call 'em advantages — 
so you'll not waste your power, I dare say." 

"Mr. Bounderby," said Jem, turning with a smile to Louisa, 
" is a noble animal in a comparatively natural state, quite free from 
the harness in which a conventional hack like myself works." 

"You respect Mr. Bounderby very much," she quietly returned. 
"It is natural that you should." 

He was disgracefully thrown out, for a gentleman who had seen 
so much of the world, and thought, "Now, how am I to take 
this?" 

" You are going to devote yourself, as I gather from what Mr. 
Bounderby has said, to the service of your country. You have 
made up your mind," said Louisa, still standing before him where 
she had first stopped — in all the singular contrariety of her self- 
possession, and her being obviously very ill at ease — "to show the 
nation the way out of all its difiiculties." 

" Mrs. Bounderby," he returned, laughing, " upon my honour, no. 
I will make no such pretence to you. I have seen a little, here 
and there, up and down ; I have found it all to be very worthless, 
as everybody has, and as some confess they have, and some do not ; 
and I am going in for your respected father's opinions — really 
because I have no choice of opinions, and may as well back them 
as anything else." 

" Have you none of your own 1 " asked Louisa. 

" I have not so much as the slightest predilection left. I assure 
you I attach not the least importance to any opinions. The result 
of the varieties of boredom I have undergone is a conviction (unless 
conviction is too industrious a word for the lazy sentiment I entertain 
on the subject), that any set of ideas will do just as much good as 
any other set, and just as much harm as any other set. There's an 
English family with a charming Italian motto. What will be, 
will be. It's the only truth going ! " 

This vicious assumption of honesty in dishonesty — a vice so 
dangerous, so deadly, and so common — seemed, he observed, a 
little to impress her in his favour. He followed up the advantage, 



624 HARD TIMES. 

by saying in his pleasantest manner : a manner to which she might 
attach as much or as little meaning as she pleased : " The side that 
can prove anything in a line of units, tens, hundreds, and thousands, 
Mrs. Bounderby, seems to me to afford the most fun, and to give a 
man the best chance. I am quite as much attached to it as if I 
believed it. I am quite ready to go in for it, to the same extent as 
if I believed it. And what more could I possibly do, if I did 
believe it ! " 

"You are a singular politician," said Louisa. 

" Pardon me ; I have not even that merit. We are the largest 
party in the state, I assure you, Mrs. Bounderby, if we fell out of 
our adopted ranks and were reviewed together." 

Mr. Bounderby, who had been in danger of bursting in silence, 
interposed here with a project for postponing the family dinner till 
half-past six, and taking Mr. James Harthouse in the meantime on 
a round of visits to the voting and interesting notabilities of Coke- 
town and its vicinity. The round of visits was made ; and Mr. 
James Harthouse, with a discreet use of his blue coaching, came 
off triumphantly, though with a considerable accession of bore- 
dom. 

In the evening, he found the dinner-table laid for four, but they 
sat down only three. It was an appropriate occasion for Mr. 
Bounderby to discuss the flavour of the hap'orth of stewed eels he 
had purchased in the streets at eight years old ; and also of the 
inferior water, specially used for laying the dust, with which he 
had washed down that repast. He likewise entertained his guest 
over the soup and fish, with the calculation that he (Bounderby) 
had eaten in his youth at least three horses under the guise of 
polonies and saveloys. These recitals, Jem, in a languid manner, 
received with "charming !" every now and then; and they prob- 
ably would have decided him to "go in" for Jerusalem again to- 
morrow morning, had he been less curious respecting Louisa. 

"Is there nothing," he thought, glancing at her as she sat at the 
head of the table, where her youthful figure, small and slight, but 
very graceful, looked as pretty as it looked misplaced; "is there 
nothing that will move that face ? " 

Yes ! By Jupiter, there was something, and here it was, in an 
unexpected shape. Tom appeared. She changed as the door 
opened, and broke into a beaming smile, 

A beautiful smile. Mr. James Harthouse might not have 
thought so much of it, but that he had wondered so long at her 
impassive face. She put out her hand — a pretty little soft hand ; 
and her fingers closed upon her brother's, as if she would have 
carried them to her lips. 




THE RECEPTION OF TOM BY HIS SISTER. 



526 HARD TIMES. 

" Ay, ay ? " thought the visitor. " This whelp is the only creat- 
ure she cares for. So, so ! " 

The whelp was presented, and took his chair. The appellation 
was not flattering, but not unmerited. 

" When I was your age, young Tom," said Bounderby, " I was 
punctual, or I got no dinner ! " 

"When you were my age," returned Tom, "you hadn't a wrong 
balance to get right, and hadn't to dress afterwards." 

"Never mind that now," said Bounderby. 

"Well, then," grumbled Tom. "Don't begin with me." 

"Mrs. Bounderby," said Harthouse, perfectly hearing this under- 
strain as it went on; " your brother's face is quite familiar to me. 
Can I have seen him abroad 1 Or at some public school, perhaps ?" 

"No," she returned, quite interested, "he has never been abroad 
yet, and was educated here, at home. Tom, love, I am telling 
Mr. Harthouse that he never saw you abroad." 

" No such luck, sir," said Tom. 

There was little enough in him to brighten her face, for he was 
a sullen young fellow, and ungracious in his manner even to her. 
So much the greater must have been the solitude of her heart, and 
her need of some one on whom to bestow it. " So much the more 
is this whelp the only creature she has ever cared for," thought Mr. 
James Harthouse, turning it over and over. " So much the more. 
So much the more." 

Both in his sister's presence, and after she had left the room, 
the whelp took no pains to hide his contempt for Mr. Bounderby, 
whenever he could indulge it without the observation of that inde- 
pendent man, by making wry faces, or shutting one eye. Without 
responding to these telegraphic communications, Mr. Harthouse 
encouraged him much in the course of the evening, and showed an 
unusual liking for him. At last, when he rose to return to his 
hotel, and was a little doubtful whether he knew the way by night, 
the whelp immediately proffered his services as guide, and turned out 
with him to escort him thither. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE WHELP. 

It was very remarkable that a young gentleman who had been 
brought up under one continuous system of unnatural restraint, 
should be a hypocrite ; but it was certainly the case with Tom. 
It was very strange that a young gentleman who had never been 
left to his own guidance for five consecutive minutes, should be 



HARD TIMES. 527 

incapable at last of governing himself; but so it was with Tom. 
It was altogether unaccountable that a young gentleman whose 
imagination had been strangled in his cradle, should be still incon- 
venienced by its ghost in the form of grovelling sensualities ; but 
such a monster, beyond all doubt, was Tom. 

"Do you smoke?" asked Mr. James Harthouse, when they 
came to the hotel. 

" I believe you ! " said Tom. 

He could do no less than ask Tom up; and Tom could do 
no less than go up. What with a cooling drink adapted to the 
weather, but not so weak as cool ; and what with a rarer tobacco 
than was to be bought in those parts ; Tom was soon in a highly 
free and easy state at his end of the sofa, and more than ever dis- 
posed to admire his new friend at the other end. 

Tom blew his smoke aside, after he had been smoking a little 
while, and took an observation of his friend. " He don't seem to 
care about his dress," thought Tom, "and yet how capitally he 
does it. What an easy swell he is ! " 

Mr. James Harthouse, happening to catch Tom's eye, remarked 
that he drank nothing, and filled his glass with his own negligent 
hand. 

"Thank'ee," said Tom. "Thank'ee. Well, Mr. Harthouse, I 
hope you have had about a dose of old Bounderby to-night." Tom 
said this with one eye shut up again, and looking over his glass 
knowingly, at his entertainer. 

" A very good fellow indeed ! " returned Mr. James Harthouse. 

" You think so, don't you 1 " said Tom. And shut up his eye 
again. 

Mr. James Harthouse smiled; and rising from his end of the 
sofa, and lounging with his back against the chimney-piece, so that 
he stood before the empty fire-grate as he smoked, in front of Tom 
and looking down at him, observed : 

" What a comical brother-in-law you are ! " 

" What a comical brother-in-law old Bounderby is, I think you 
mean," said Tom. 

"You are a piece of caustic, Tom," retorted Mr. James Hart- 
house. 

There was something so very agreeable in being so intimate with 
such a waistcoat ; in being called Tom, in such an intimate way, 
by such a voice; in being on such ofi'-hand terms so soon, with 
such a pair of whiskers ; that Tom was uncommonly pleased with 
himself. 

"Oh ! I don't care for old Bounderby," said he, " if you mean 
that. I have always called old Bounderby by the same name 



528 HARD TIMES. 

when I have talked about him, and I have always thought of him 
in the same way. I am not going to begin to be polite now, about 
old Bounderby. It would be rather late in the day." 

"Don't mind me," returned James; "but take care when his 
wife is by, you know." 

" His wife 1 " said Tom. " My sister Loo ? yes ! " And he 
laughed, and took a little more of the cooling drink. 

James Harthouse continued to lounge in the same place and 
attitude, smoking his cigar in his own easy way, and looking pleas- 
antly at the whelp, as if he knew himself to be a kind of agreeable 
demon who had only to hover over him, and he must give up his 
whole soul if required. It certainly did seem that the whelp 
yielded to this influence. He looked at his companion sneakingly, 
he looked at him admiringly, he looked at him boldly, and put up 
one leg on the sofa. 

"My sister Loo?" said Tom. ^' She never cared for old Boun- 
derby." 

" That's the past tense, Tom," returned Mr. James Harthouse, 
striking the ash from his cigar with his Uttle finger. "We are in 
the present tense, now." 

"Verb neuter, not to care. Indicative mood, present tense. 
First person singular, I do not care ; second person singular, thou dost 
not care ; third person singular, she does not care," returned Tom. 

" Good ! Very quaint ! " said his friend. " Though you don't 
mean it." 

"But I do mean it," cried Tom. "Upon my honour! Why, 
you won't tell me, Mr. Harthouse, that you really suppose my 
sister Loo does care for old Bounderby." 

"My dear fellow," returned the other, "what am I bound to 
suppose, when I find two married people living in harmony and 
happiness ? " 

Tom had by this time got both his legs on the sofa. If his 
second" leg had not been already there when he was called a dear 
fellow, he would have put it up at that great stage of the conver- 
sation. Feeling it necessaiy to do something then, he stretched 
himself out at greater length, and, reclining with the back of his 
head on the end of the sofa, and smoking with an infinite assump- 
tion of negligence, turned his common face, and not too sober eyes, 
towards the face looking down upon him so carelessly yet so 
potently. 

" You know our governor, Mr. Harthouse," said Tom, " and 
therefore you needn't be surprised that Loo married old Boun- 
derby. She never had a lover, and the governor proposed old 
Bounderby, and she took him." 



HARD TIMES. 529 

" Very dutiful in your interesting sister," said Mr. James Hart- 
house. 

" Yes, but she wouldn't have been as dutiful, and it would not 
have come off as easily," returned the whelp, "if it hadn't been for 
me." 

The tempter merely lifted his eyebrows; but the whelp was 
obliged to go on. 

"/persuaded her," he said, with an edifying air of superiority. 
" I was stuck into old Bounderby's bank (where I never wanted 
to be), and I knew I should get into scrapes there, if she put old 
Bounderby's pipe out ; so I told her my ^^•ishes, and she came into 
them. She would, do anything for me. It was very game of her, 
wasn't it 1 " 

" It was charming, Tom ! " 

" Not that it was altogether so important to her as it was to 
me," continued Tom coolly, "because my liberty and comfort, and 
perhaps my getting on, depended on it; and she had no other 
lover, and staying at home was like staging in jail — especially 
when I was gone. It wasn't as if she gave up another lover for 
old Bounderby ; but still it was a good thing in her." 

" Perfectly delightful. And she gets on so placidly." 

" Oh," returned Tom, with contemptuous patronage, " she's a 
regular girl. A girl can get on anywhere. She has settled down 
to the Hfe, and she don't mind. It does just as well as another. 
Besides, though Loo is a girl, she's not a common sort of girl. 
She can shut herself up within herself, and think — as I have 
often known her sit and watch the fire — for an hour at a stretch." 

"Ay, ay? Has resources of her own," said Harthouse, smoking 
quietly. 

" Not so much of that as you may suppose," returned Tom; "for 
our governor had her crammed with all sorts of dry bones and 
sawdust. It's his system." 

" Formed his daughter on his own model ? " suggested Harthouse. 

" His daughter? Ah ! and everybody else. Why he formed Me 
that way," said Tom. 

" Impossible ! " 

"He did, though," said Tom, shaking his head. "I mean to 
say, Mr. Harthouse, that when I first left home and went to old 
Bounderby's, I was as flat as a warming-pan, and knew no more 
about life, than any oyster does." 

" Come, Tom ! I can hardly believe that. A joke's a joke." 

" Upon my soul ! " said the whelp. " I am serious ; I am 
indeed ! " He smoked with great gravity and dignity for a little 
while, and then added, in a highly complacent tone, "Oh! I have 



530 HARD TIMES. 

picked up a little since. I don't deny that. But I have done it 
myself; no thanks to the governor." 

" And your intelligent sister ? " 

" My intelligent sister is about where she was. She used to 
complain to me that she had nothing to fall back upon, that 
girls usually fall back upon ; and I don't see how she is to have got 
over that since. But $he don't mind," he sagaciously added, puff- 
ing at his cigar again. "Girls can always get on, somehow." 

"Calling at the Bank yesterday evening, for Mr. Bounderby's 
address, I found an ancient lady there, who seems to entertain 
great admiration for your sister," observed Mr. James Harthouse, 
throwing away the last small remnant of the cigar he had now 
smoked out. 

"Mother Sparsit ! " said Tom. "What! you have seen her 
already, have you % " 

His friend nodded. Tom took his cigar out of his mouth, to shut 
up his eye (which had grown rather unmanageable) with the 
greater expression, and to tap his nose several times with his finger. 

"Mother Sparsit's feeling for Loo is more than admiration, I 
should think," said Tom. " Say affection and devotion. Mother 
Sparsit never set her cap at Bounderby when he was a bachelor. 
Oh no ! " 

These were the last words spoken by the whelp, before a giddy 
drowsiness came upon him, followed by complete oblivion. He was 
roused from the latter state by an uneasy dream of being stirred up 
with a boot, and also of a voice saying : " Come, it's late. Be off ! " 

"Well ! " he said, scrambling from the sofa. "I must take my 
leave of you though. I say. Yours is very good tobacco. But 
it's too mild." 

"Yes, it's too mild," returned his entertainer. 

" It's — it's ridiculously mild," said Tom. " Where's the door ! 
Good night ! " 

He had another odd dream of being taken by a waiter through a 
mist, which, after giving him some trouble and difficulty, resolved 
itself into the main street, in which he stood alone. He then 
walked home pretty easily, though not yet free from an impression 
of the presence and influence of his new friend — as if he were 
lounging somewhere in the air, in the same negligent attitude, 
regarding him with the same look. 

The whelp went home, and went to bed. If he had had any 
sense of what he had done that night, and had been less of a whelp 
and more of a brother, he might have turned short on the road, 
might have gone down to the ill-smelling river that was dyed black, 
might have gone to bed in it for good and all, and have curtained 
his head for ever with its filthy waters. 



HARD TIMES. 531 

CHAPTER IV. 

MEN AND BEOTHEES. 

" Oh my friends, the down-trodden operatives of Coketown ! Oh 
my friends and fellow-countrymen, the slaves of an iron-handed and 
a grinding despotism! Oh my friends and fellow-sufferers, and 
fellow- workmen, and fellow-men ! I tell you that the hour is come, 
when Ave must rally round one another as One united power, and 
crumble into dust the oppressors that too long have battened upon 
the plunder of our families, upon the sweat of our brows, upon the 
labour of our hands, upon the strength of our sinews, upon the God- 
created glorious rights of Humanity, and upon the holy and eternal 
privileges of Brotherhood ! " 

"Good!" "Hear, hear, hear!" "Hurrah! "and other cries, 
arose in many voices from various parts of the densely crowded and 
suffocatingly close Hall, in which the orator, perched on a stage, 
delivered himself of this and what other froth and fume he had in 
him. He had declaimed himself into a violent heat, and was as 
hoarse as he was hot. By dint of roaring at the top of his voice 
under a flaring gas-light, clenching his fists, knitting his brows, 
setting his teeth, and pounding with his arms, he had taken so 
much out of himself by this time, that he was brought to a stop, 
and called for a glass of water. 

As he stood there, trying to quench his fiery face with his drink 
of water, the comparison between the orator and the crowd of 
attentive faces turned towards him, was extremely to his disadvan- 
tage. Judging him by Nature's evidence, he was above the mass 
in very little but the stage on which he stood. In many great 
respects he was essentially below them. He was not so honest, he 
was not so manly, he was not so good-humoured; he substituted 
cunning for their simplicity, and passion for their safe solid sense. 
An ill-made, high-shouldered man, with lowering brows, and his 
features crushed into an habitually sour expression, he con- 
trasted most unfavourably, even in his mongrel dress, with the 
great body of his hearers in their plain working clothes. Strange 
as it always is to consider any assembly in the act of submissively 
resigning itself to the dreariness of some complacent person, lord 
or commoner, whom three-fourths of it could, by no human means, 
raise out of the slough of inanity to their own intellectual level, it 
was particularly strange, and it was even particularly affecting, to 
see this crowd of earnest faces, whose honesty in the main no com- 
petent observer free from bias could doubt, so agitated by such a 
leader. 



532 HARD TIMES. 

Good ! Hear, hear ! HiiiTah ! The eagerness both of attention 
and intention, exhibited in all the countenances, made them a most 
impressive sight. There was no carelessness, no languor, no idle 
curiosity ; none of the many shades of indifference to be seen in all 
other assemblies, visible for one moment there. That every man 
felt his condition to be, somehow or other, worse than it might be ; 
that every man considered it incumbent on him to join the rest, 
towards the making of it better ; that every man felt his only hope 
to be in his allying himself to the comrades by whom he was sur- 
rounded ; and that in this belief, right or wrong (unhappily wrong 
then), the whole of that crowd were gravely, deeply, faithfully in 
earnest; must have been as plain to any one who chose to see 
what was there, as the bare beams of the roof and the whitened 
brick walls. Nor could any such spectator fail to know in his own 
breast, that these men, through their very delusions, showed great 
qualities, susceptible of being turned to the happiest and best 
account ; and that to pretend (on the strength of sweeping axioms, 
howsoever cut and dried) that they went astray wholly without 
cause, and of their own irrational wills, was to pretend that there 
could be smoke without fire, death without birth, harvest without 
seed, anything or everything produced from nothing. 

The orator having refreshed himself, wiped his corrugated fore- 
head from left to right several times with his handkerchief folded 
into a pad, and concentrated all his revived forces, in a sneer of 
great disdain and bitterness. 

■" But, oh my friends and brothers ! Oh men and Englishmen, 
the down-trodden operatives of Coketown ! What shall we say of 
that man — that working-man, that I should find it necessary 
so to libel the glorious name — who, being practically and well 
acquainted with the grievances and wrongs of you, tlie injured pith 
and marrow of this land, and having heard you, with a noble and 
majestic unanimity that will make Tyrants tremble, resolve for to 
subscribe to the funds of the United Aggregate Tribunal, and to 
abide by the injunctions issued by that body for your benefit, what- 
ever they may be — what, I ask you, will you say of that working- 
man, since such I must acknowledge him to be, who, at such a 
time, deserts his post, and sells his flag; who, at such a time, 
turns a traitor and a craven and a recreant ; who, at such a time, 
is not ashamed to make to you the dastardly and humiliating 
avowal that he will hold himself aloof, and will not be one of those 
associated in the gallant stand for Freedom and for Right ? " 

The assembly was divided at this point. There were some 
groans and hisses, but the general sense of honour was much too 
strong for the condemnation of a man unheard. " Be sure you're 



\ 



HAED TIMES. 533 

right, Slackbridge ! " " Put him up ! " " Let's hear him ! " Such 
things were said on many sides. Finally, one strong voice called 
out, " Is the man heer ? If the man's heer, Slackbridge, let's hear 
the man himseln, 'stead o' yo." Which was received with a round 
of applause. 

Slackbridge, the orator, looked about him with a withering 
smile; and, holding out his right hand at arm's length (as the 
manner of all Slackbridges is), to still the thundering sea, waited 
until there was a profound silence. 

" Oh my friends and fellow-men ! " said Slackbridge then, shak- 
ing his head with violent scorn, " I do not wonder that you, the 
prostrate sons of labour, are incredulous of the existence of such a 
man. But he who sold his birthright for a mess of pottage existed, 
and Judas Iscariot existed, and Castlereagh existed, and this man 
exists ! " 

Here, a brief press and confusion near the stage, ended in the 
man himself standing at the orator's side before the concourse. 
He was pale and a little moved in the face — his lips especially 
showed it ; but he stood quiet, with his left hand at his chin, wait- 
ing to be heard. There was a chairman to regulate the proceed- 
ings, and this functionary now took the case into his own hands. 

"My friends," said he, "by virtue o' my office as your president, 
I ashes o' our friend Slackbridge, who may be a little over better 
in this business, to take his seat, whiles this man Stephen Black- 
pool is heern. You all know this man Stephen Blackpool. You 
know him awlung o' his misfort'ns, and his good name." 

With that, the chairman shook him frankly by the hand, and 
sat down again. Slackbridge likewise sat down, wiping his hot 
forehead — always from left to right, and never the reverse way. 

"My friends," Stephen began, in the midst of a dead calm; "I 
ha' hed what's been spok'n o' me, and 'tis lickly that I shan't mend 
it. But I'd liefer you'd hearn the truth concernin myseln, fro my 
lips than fro onny other man's, though I never cud'n speak afore 
so monny, wi'out bein moydert and muddled." 

Slackbridge shook his head as if he would shake it off, in his 
bitterness. 

" I'm th' one single Hand in Bounderby's mill, o' a' the men 
theer, as don't coom in wi' th' proposed reg'lations. I canna' coom 
in wi' 'em. My friends, I doubt their doin' yo onny good. Licker 
they'll do yo hurt." 

Slackbridge laughed, folded his arms, and frowned sarcastically. 

" But 't ant sommuch for that as I stands out. If that were 
aw, I'd coom in wi' th' rest. But I ha' my reasons — mine, you see 
■ — for being hindered ; not on'y now, but awlus — awlus — life long !" 



534 HARD TIMES. 

Slackbridge jumped up aud stood beside him, gnashing and tear- 
ing. "Oh my friends, what but this did I tell you? Oh my 
fellow-countrymen, what warning but this did I give you ? And 
how shows this recreant conduct in a man on whom unequal laws 
are known to have fallen heavy ? Oh you Englishmen, I ask you 
how does this subornation show in one of yourselves, who is thus 
consenting to his own undoing and to yours, and to your children's 
and your children's children's ? " 

There was some applause, and some crying of Shame upon the 
man; but the greater part of the audience were quiet. They 
looked at Stephen's worn face, rendered more pathetic by the 
homely emotions it evinced ; and, in the kindness of their nature, 
they were more sorry than indignant. 

"'Tis this Delegate's trade for t' speak," said Stephen, "an' he's 
paid for 't, an he knows his work. Let him keep to 't. Let him 
give no heed to what I ha had'n to bear. That's not for him. 
That's not for nobbody but me." 

There was a propriety, not to say a dignity in these words, that 
made the hearers yet more quiet and attentive. The same strong 
voice called out, "Slackbridge, let the man be heern, and howd 
thee tongue ! " Then the place was wonderfully still. 

"My brothers," said Stephen, whose low voice was distinctly 
heard, " and my fellow- workmen — for that yo are to me, though 
not, as I knows on, to this delegate here — I ha but a word to sen, 
and I could sen nommore if I was to speak till Strike o' day. I 
know weel, aw what's afore me. I know weel that yo aw resolve 
to ha nommore ado wi' a man who is not wi' yo in this matther. 
I know weel that if I was a lyin parisht i' th' road, yo'd feel it 
right to pass me by, as a forrenner and stranger. What I ha getn, 
I mun mak th' best on." 

"Stephen Blackpool," said the chairman, rising, "think on't 
agen. Think on't once agen, lad, afore thour't shunned by aw 
owd friends." 

There was an universal murmur to the same effect, though no 
man articulated a word. Every eye was fixed on Stephen's face. 
To repent of his determination, would be to take a load from all 
their minds. He looked around him, and knew that it was so. 
Not a grain of anger mth them was in his heart ; he knew them, 
fcir below their surface weaknesses and misconceptions, as no one 
but their fellow-labourer could. 

" I ha thowt on't, above a bit, sir. I simply canna coom in. 
I mun go th' way as lays afore me. I mun tak my leave o' aw 
heer." 

He made a sort of reverence to them by holding up his arms, 



I 



HAED TIMES. 535 

and stood for the moment in that attitude : not speaking until 
they slowly dropped at his sides, 

"Monny's the pleasant word as soom heer has spok'n wi' me; 
monny's the face I see heer, as I first seen when I were yoong and 
lighter heart'n than now. I ha' never had no fratch afore, sin 
ever I were born, wi' any o' my like ; Gonnows I ha' none now 
that's o' my makin'. Yo'll ca' me traitor and that — yo I mean t' 
sav," addressing Slackbridge, "but 'tis easier to ca' than mak' out. 
So let be." 

He had moved away a pace or two to come down from the 
platform, when he remembered something he had not said, and 
returned again. 

" Haply," he said, tui'ning his fun^owed face slowly about, that 
he might as it were individually address the whole audience, those 
both near and distant ; " haply, when this question has been tak'n 
up and discoosed, there'll be a thi'eat to turn out if I'm let to work 
among yo, I hope I shall die ere ever such a time cooms, and I 
shall work solitaiy among yo unless it cooms — truly, I mun do't, 
my friends ; not to brave yo, but to live. I ha nobbut work to 
live by ; and wheerever can I go, I who ha worked sin I were no 
heighth at aw, in Coketown heer ? I mak' no complaints o' bein 
turned to the wa', o' being outcasten and overlooken fro this time 
forrard, but I hope I shall be let to work. If there is any right 
for me at aw, my friends, I think 'tis that." 

Xot a word was spoken. Not a sound was audible in the 
building, but the slight rustle of men moving a little apart, aU 
along the centre of the room, to open a means of passing out, 
to the man with whom they had aU bound themselves to renounce 
companionship. Looking at no one, and going his way with a 
lowly steadiness upon him that asserted nothing and sought 
nothing. Old Stephen, with all his troubles on his head, left the 
scene. 

Then Slackbridge, who had kept his oratorical arm extended 
during the going out, as if he were repressing with infinite solici- 
tude and by a wonderful moral power the vehement passions of the 
multitude, applied himself to raising their spirits. Had not the 
Roman Brutus, oh my British countrymen, condemned his son to 
death : and had not the Spartan mothers, oh my soon to be victori- 
ous friends, driven their flying children on the points of their 
enemies' swords 1 Then was it not the sacred duty of the men of 
Coketown, with forefathers before them, an admiring world in com- 
pany with them, and a posterity to come after them, to hurl out 
traitors from the tents they had pitched in a sacred and a Godlike 
cause 1 The vvinds of heaven answered Yes : and bore Yes, east, 



536 HARD TIMES. 

west, north, and south. And consequently three cheers for the 
United Aggregate Tribunal ! 

Slackbridge acted as fugleman, and gave the time. The multi- 
tude of doubtful faces (a little conscience stricken) brightened at 
the sound, and took it up. Private feeling must yield to the com- 
mon cause. Hurrah ! The roof yet vibrated with the cheering, 
when the assembly dispersed. 

Thus easily did Stephen Blackpool fall into the loneliest of lives, 
the life of solitude among a familiar crowd. The stranger in the 
land who looks into ten thousand faces for some answering look 
and never finds it, is in cheering society as compared with him 
who passes ten averted faces daily, that were once the countenances 
of friends. Such experience was to be Stephen's now, in every 
waking moment of his life ; at his work, on his way to it and from 
it, at his door, at his window, everywhere. By general consent, 
they even avoided that side of the street on which he habitually 
walked ; and left it, of all the working-men, to him only. 

He had been for many years, a quiet silent man, associating but 
little with other men, and used to companionship with his own 
thoughts. He had never known before the strength of the want 
in his heart for the frequent recognition of a nod, a look, a word; 
or the immense amount of relief that had been poured into it by 
di^ops through such small means. It was even harder than he 
could have believed possible, to separate in his ovm conscience his 
abandonment by all his fellows from a baseless sense of shame and 
disgrace. 

The first four days of his endurance were days so long and heavy, 
that he began to be appalled by the prospect before him. Not 
only did he see no Eachael all the time, but he avoided every 
chance of seeing her ; for, although he knew that the prohibition 
did not yet formally extend to the women working in the factories, 
he found that some of them with whom he was acquainted were 
changed to him, and he feared to try others, and dreaded that 
Rachael might be even singled out from the rest if she were seen in 
his company. So, he had been quite alone during the four days, 
and had spoken to no one, when, as he was leaving his work at 
night, a young man of a very light complexion accosted him in the 
street. 

"Your name's Blackpool, ain't it?" said the young man. 

Stephen coloured to find himself with his hat in his hand, in his 
gratitude for being spoken to, or in the suddenness of it, or both. 
He made a feint of adjusting the lining, and said, "Yes." 

" You are the Hand they have sent to Coventry, I mean 1 " said 
Bitzer, the very light young man in question. 



HARD TIMES. 637 

Stephen answered "Yes," again. 

" I supposed so, from their all appearing to keep away from you. 
Mr. Bounderby wants to speak to you. You know his house, don't 



you 



?" 



Stephen said " Yes," again. 

" Then go straight up there, will you 1 " said Bitzer. " You're 
expected, and have only to tell the servant it's you. I belong to 
the Bank ; so, if you go straight up without me (I was sent to 
fetch you), you'll save me a walk." 

Stephen, whose way had been in the contrary direction, turned 
about, and betook himself as in duty bound, to the red brick 
castle of the giant Bounderby. 



CHAPTER V. 

MEN AND MASTERS. 

"Well, Stephen," said Bounderby, in his windy manner, "what's 
this I hear ? What have these pests of the earth been doing to 
1/ou ? Come in, and speak up." 

It was into the drawing-room that he was thus bidden. A tea- 
table was set out; and Mr. Bounderby's young wife, and her 
brother, and a great gentleman from London, were present. To 
whom Stephen made his obeisance, closing the door and standing 
near it, with his hat in his hand. 

" This is the man I was telling you about, Harthouse," said Mr. 
Bounderby. The gentleman he addressed, who was talking to Mrs. 
Bounderby on the sofa, got up, saying in an indolent way, " Oh 
really?" and dawdled to the hearth-rug where Mr. Bounderby 
stood. 

" Now," said Bounderby, " speak up ! " 

After the four days he had passed, this address fell rudely and 
discordantly on Stephen's ear. Besides being a rough handling of 
his wounded mind, it seemed to assume that he really was the self- 
interested deserter he had been called. 

"What were it, sir," said Stephen, "as yo were pleased to want 
wi' me ? " 

"Why, I have told you," returned Bounderby. "Speak up like 
a man, since you are a man, and tell us about yourself and this 
Combination." 

"Wi' yor pardon, sir," said Stephen Blackpool, "I ha' nowt to 
sen about it." 

Mr. Bounderby, who was always more or less like a Wind, find- 
ing something in his way here, began to blow at it directly. 



538 HAKD TIMES. 

"Now, look here, Harthouse," said he, "here's a specimen of 
'em. When this man was here once before, I warned this man 
against the mischievous strangers who are always about — and who 
ought to be hanged wherever they are found — and I told this 
man that he was going in the wrong direction. Now, would you 
believe it, that although they have put this mark upon him, he is 
such a slave to them still, that he's afraid to open his lips about 
them?" 

" I sed as I had nowt to sen, sir ; not as I was fearfo' o' openin' 
my lips." 

" You said. Ah ! / know what you said ; more than that, I 
know what you mean, you see. Not always the same thing, by the 
Lord Harry ! Quite different things. You had better tell us at 
once, that that fellow Slackbridge is not in the town, stirring up the 
people to mutiny; and that he is not a regular qualified leader of 
the people : that is, a most confounded scoundrel. You had better 
tell us so at once ; you can't deceive me. You want to tell us so. 
Why don't you ? " 

" I'm as sooary as yo, sir, when the people's leaders is bad," said 
Stephen, shaking his head. "They taks such as offers. Haply 
'tis na' the sma'est o' their misfortuns when they can get no better." 

The wind began to get boisterous. 

" Now, you'll think this pretty well, Harthouse," said Mr. Boun- 
derby. " You'll think this tolerably strong. You'll say, upon my 
soul this is a tidy specimen of what my friends have to deal with ; 
but this is nothing, sir ! You shall hear me ask this man a ques- 
tion. Pray, Mr. Blackpool" — wind springing up very fast — 
" may I take the liberty of asking you how it happens that you 
refused to be in this Combination ? " 

" How 't happens 1 " 

" Ah ! " said Mr. Bounderby, with his thumbs in the arms of his 
coat, and jerking his head and shutting his eyes in confidence with 
the opposite wall: "how it happens." 

"I'd leefer not coom to't, sir ; but sin you put th' question — 
an not want'n t' be ill-manner'n — I'll answer. I ha passed a 
promess." 

" Not to me, you know," said Bounderby. (Gusty weather with 
deceitful calms. One now prevailing.) 

"0 no, sir. Not to yo." 

" As for me, any consideration for me has had just nothing at all 
to do with it," said Bounderby, still in confidence with the wall. 
" If only Josiah Bounderby of Coketown had been in question, you 
would have joined and made no bones about it?" 

"Why yes, sir. 'Tis true." 



I 



HARD TIMES. 539 

"Though he knows," said Mr. Bounderby, now blowing a gale, 
" that there are a set of rascals and rebels whom transportation is 
too good for ! Now, Mr. Harthouse, you have been knocking about 
in the world some time. Did you ever meet with anything like 
that man out of this blessed country 1 " And Mr. Bounderby pointed 
him out for inspection, with an angry finger. 

"Nay, ma'am," said Stephen Blackpool, staunchly protesting 
against the words that had been used, and instinctively addressing 
himself to Louisa, after glancing at her face. " Not rebels, nor 
yet rascals. Nowt o' th' kind, ma'am, nowt o' th' kind. They've 
not doon me a kindness, ma'am, as I know and feel. But there's 
not a dozen men amoong 'em, ma'am — a dozen 1 Not six — but 
what believes as he has doon his duty by the rest and by himseln. 
God forbid as I, that ha known, and had'n experience o' these men 
aw my life — I, that ha ett'n an droonken wi' 'em, an seet'n wi' 
'em, and toil'n wi' 'em, and lov'n 'em, should fail fur to stan by 'em 
wi' the truth, let 'em ha doon to me what they may ! " 

He spoke with the rugged earnestness of his place and character 
— deepened perhaps by a proud consciousness that he was faithful 
to his class under all their mistrust ; but he fully remembered where 
he was, and did not even raise his voice. 

" No, ma'am, no. They're true to one another, faithfo' to one 
another, fectionate to one another, e'en to death. Be poor amoong 
'em, be sick amoong 'em, grieve amoong 'em for onny o' th' monny 
causes that carries grief to the poor man's door, and they'll be 
tender wi' yo, gentle wi' yo, comfortable wi' yo, Chrisen wi' yo. Be 
sure o' that, ma'am. They'd be riven to bits, ere ever they'd be 
different." 

" In short," said Mr. Bounderby, "it's because they are so full of 
virtues that they have turned you adrift. Go through with it 
while you are about it. Out with it." 

" How 'tis, ma'am," resumed Stephen, appearing still to find his 
natural refuge in Louisa's face, " that what is best in us fok, seems 
to turn us the most to trouble an misfort'n an mistake, I dunno. 
But 'tis so. I know 'tis, as I know the heavens is over me ahint 
the smoke. We're patient too, an wants in general to do right. 
An' I canna think the fawt is aw wi' us." 

" Now, my friend," said Mr. Bounderby, whom he could not have 
exasperated more, quite unconscious of it though he was, than by 
seeming to appeal to any one else, " if you will favour me with your 
attention for half a minute, I should like to have a word or two 
with you. You said just now, that you had nothing to tell us 
about this business. You are quite sure of that before we go any 
further." 



640 HARD TIMES. 

" Sir, I am sure on't." 

" Here's a gentleman from Loudon present," Mr. Bounderby made 
a backhanded point at Mr. James Harthouse with his thumb, " a 
Parliament gentleman. I should like him to hear a short bit of 
dialogue between you and me, instead of taking the substance of it 
— for I know precious well, beforehand, what it will be ; nobody 
knows better than I do, take notice ! — instead of receiving it on 
trust from my mouth." 

Stephen bent his head to the gentleman from London, and showed 
a rather more troubled mind than usual. He turned his eyes invol- 
untarily to his former refuge, but at a look from that quarter (expres- 
sive though instantaneous) he settled them on Mr. Bounderby's face. 

" Xow, what do you complain of?" asked Mr. Bounderby. 

" I ha' not coom here, sir," Stephen reminded him, " to complain. 
I coom for that I were sent for." 

"What," repeated Mr. Bounderby, folding his arms, "do you 
people, in a general way, complain of ? " 

Stephen looked at him with some little irresolution for a moment, 
and then seemed to make up his mind. 

" Sir, I were never good at showing o 't, though I ha had'n my 
share in feeling o 't. 'Deed we are in a muddle, sir. Look round 
town — so rich as "tis — and see the numbers o' people as has been 
broughten into bein heer, fur to weave, an to card, an to piece out a 
livin', aw the same one way, somehows, twixt their cradles and their 
graves. Look how we live, and wheer we live, an in what numbers, 
an by what chances, and wi' what sameness ; and look how the 
mills is awlus a goin, and how they never works us no nigher to ony 
dis'ant object — ceptin awlus. Death. Look how you considers of 
us, and writes of us, and talks of us, and goes up wi' yor deputations 
to Secretaries o' State 'bout us, and how yo are awlus right, and how 
we are awlus wrong, and never had'n no reason in us sin ever we 
were born. Look how this ha growen an growen, sir, bigger an 
bigger, broader an broader, harder an harder, fro year to year, fro 
generation unto generation. Who can look on 't, sir, and fairly tell 
a man 'tis not a muddle ? " 

"Of course," said Mr. Bounderby. "Now perhaps you'll let 
the gentleman know, how you would set this muddle (as you're so 
fond of calling it) to rights." 

"I donno, sir. I canna be expecten to 't. 'Tis not me as should 
be looken to for that, sir. 'Tis them as is put ower me, and ower 
aw the rest of us. What do they tak upon themseln, sir, if not 
todo't?" 

" I'll tell you something towards it, at any rate," returned Mr. 
Bounderby. "We will make an example of half a dozen Slack- 



HAED TIMES. 541 

bridges. We'll indict the blackguards for felony, and get 'em 
shipped off to penal settlements." 

Stephen gravely shook his head. 

"Don't tell me we won't, man," said Mr. Bounderby, by this 
time blowing a hurricane, " because we will, I tell you ! " 

" Sir," returned Stephen, with the quiet confidence of absolute 
certainty, " if yo was t' tak a hundred Slackbridges — aw as there 
is, and aw the number ten times towd — an' was t' sew 'em up in 
separate sacks, an sink 'em in the deepest ocean as were made ere 
ever dry land coom to be, yo'd leave the muddle just wheer 'tis. 
Mischeevous strangers ! " said Stephen, with an anxious smile ; 
" when ha we not heern, I am sure, sin ever we can call to mind, 
o' th' mischeevous strangers ! 'Tis not by them the trouble's 
made, sir. 'Tis not wi' them 't commences. I ha no favour for 
'em — I ha no reason to favour 'em — but 'tis hopeless and useless 
to dream o' takin them fro their trade, 'stead o' takin their trade 
fro them ! Aw that's now about me in this room were heer afore 
I coom, an will be heer when I am gone. Put that clock aboard 
a ship an pack it off to Norfolk Island, an the time will go on 
just the same. So 'tis wi' Slackbridge every bit." 

Eeverting for a moment to his former refuge, he observed a cau- 
tionary movement of her eyes towards the door. Stepping back, 
he put his hand upon the lock. But he had not spoken out of 
his own will and desire ; and he felt it in his heart a noble return 
for his late injurious treatment to be faithful to the last to those 
who had repudiated him. He stayed to finish what was in his mind. 

" Sir, I canna, wi' my little learning an my common way, tell 
the genelman what will better aw this — though some working- 
men o' this town could, above my powers — but I can tell him 
what I know will never do 't. The strong hand will never do 't. 
Vict'ry and triumph will never do 't. Agreeing fur to mak one 
side unnat'rally awlus and for ever right, and toother side unnat'rally 
awlus and for ever wrong, will never, never do 't. Nor yet lettin 
alone will never do 't. Let thousands upon thousands alone, aw 
leading the like lives and aw faw'en into the like muddle, and they 
will be as one, and yo will be as anoother, wi' a black unpassable 
world betwixt yo, just as long or short a time as sitch-like misery 
can last. Not drawin nigh to fok, wi' kindness and patience an 
cheery ways, that so draws nigh to one another in their monny 
troubles, and so cherishes one another in their distresses wi' what 
they need themseln — like, I humbly believe, as no people the 
genelman ha seen in aw his travels can beat — will never do 't 
till th' Sun turns t' ice. Most o' aw, rating 'em as so much Power, 
and reg'latin 'em as if they was figures in a soom, or machines : 



542 HARD TIMES. 

wi'out loves and likens, wi'out memories and inclinations, wi'out 
souls to weary and souls to hope — when aw goes quiet, draggin 
on wi' 'em as if they'd nowt o' th' kind, and when aw goes onquiet, 
reproachin 'em for their want o' sitch humanly feelins in their 
dealins wi' yo — this will never do 't, sir, till God's work is 
onmade." 

Stephen stood with the open door in his hand, waiting to know 
if anything more were expected of him. 

"Just stop a moment," said Mr. Bounderby, excessively red in 
the face. " I told you, the last time you were here with a grievance, 
that you had better turn about and come out of that. And I also 
told you, if you remember, that I was up to the gold spoon lookout." 

" I were not up to 't myseln, sir ; I do assure yo." 

"Now it's clear to me," said Mr. Bounderby, "that you are one 
of those chaps who have always got a grievance. And you go 
about, sowing it and raising crops. That's the business of your 
life, my friend." 

Stephen shook his head, mutely protesting that indeed he had 
other business to do for his life. 

"You are such a waspish, raspish, ill-conditioned chap, you see," 
said Mr. Bounderby, "that even your own Union, the men who 
know you best, will have nothing to do with you. I never thought 
those fellows could be right in anything ; but I tell you what ! I 
so far go along with them for a novelty, that /'U have nothing to 
do with you either." 

Stephen raised his eyes quickly to his face. 

" You can finish off what you're at," said Mr. Bounderby, with 
a meaning nod, "and then go elsewhere." 

" Sir, yo know weel," said Stephen expressively, " that if I canna 
get work wi' yo, I canna get it elsewheer." 

The reply was, " What I know, I know ; and what you know, 
you know. I have no more to say about it." 

Stephen glanced at Louisa again, but her eyes were raised to his 
no more ; therefore, with a sigh, and saying, barely above his 
breath, " Heaven help us aw in this world ! " he departed. 



CHAPTER VI. 

FADING AWAY. 

It was falling dark when Stephen came out of Mr. Bounderby's 
house. The shadows of night had gathered so fast, that he did 
not look about him when he closed the door, but plodded straight 
along the street. Nothing was further from his thoughts than the 



HARD TIMES. 543 

curious old woman he had encountered on his previous visit to the 
same house, when he heard a step behind him that he knew, and 
turning, saw her in Eachael's company. 

He saw Rachael first, as he had heard her only. 

"Ah, Rachael, my dear ! Missus, thou wi' her ! " 

" Well, and now you are surprised to be sure, and with reason I 
must say," the old woman returned. " Here I am again, you see." 

" But how wi' Rachael 1 " said Stephen, falling into theu' step, 
walking between them, and looking from the one to the other. 

" Why, I come to be with this good lass pretty much as I came 
to be with you,'' said the old woman, cheerfully, taking the reply 
upon herself " My visiting time is later this year than usual, for 
I have been rather troubled with shortness of breath, and so put 
it off till the weather was fine and warm. For the same reason 
I don't make all my journey in one day, but divide it into two 
days, and get a bed to-night at the Travellers' Coffee House 
down by the railroad (a nice clean house), and go back Parliamen- 
tary, at six in the morning. Well, but what has this to do with 
this good lass, says you ? I'm going to tell you. I have heard of 
Mr. Bounderby being married. I read it in the paper, where it 
looked grand — oh, it looked fine ! " the old woman dwelt on it with 
strange enthusiasm : " and I want to see his wife. I have never 
seen her yet. Now, if you'll believe me, she hasn't come out of 
that house since noon to-day. So not to give her up too easily, I 
was waiting about, a little last bit more, when I passed close to 
this good lass two or three times ; and her face being so friendly I 
spoke to her, and she spoke to me. There ! " said the old woman 
to Stephen, "you can make all the rest out for yourself now, a deal 
shorter than I can, I dare say I " 

Once again, Stephen had to conquer an instinctive propensity to 
dislike this old woman, though her manner was as honest and sim- 
ple as a manner possibly could be. With a gentleness that was as 
natural to him as he knew it to be to Rachael, he pursued the 
subject that interested her in her old age. 

" Well, missus," said he, " I ha seen the lady, and she were young 
and hansom. Wi' fine dark thinkin eyes, and a still way, Rachael, 
as I ha never seen the like on." 

"Yoimg and handsome. Yes!" cried the old woman, quite 
delighted. "As bonny as a rose! And what a happy wife!" 

"Aye, missus, I suppose she be," said Stephen. But with a 
doubtful glance at Rachael. 

" Suppose she be ? She must be. She's your master's wife," 
returned the old woman. 

Stephen nodded assent. " Though as to master," said he, glanc- 



544 HARD TIMES. 

ing again at Rachael, "not master onn}^ more. That's aw enden 
twixt him and me." 

"Have you left his work, Stephen?" asked Rachael, anxiously 
and quickly. 

"Why Rachael," he replied, "whether I ha lef'n his work, or 
whether his work ha lef'n me, cooms t' th' same. His work and 
me are parted. 'Tis as weel so — better, I were thinkin when 
yo coom up wi' me. It would ha brought'n trouble upon trouble if 
I had stayed theer. Haply 'tis a kindness to monny that I go ; 
haply 'tis a kindness to myseln ; anyways it mun be done. I mun 
turn my face fro Coketown fur th' time, and seek a fort'n, dear, by 
beginnin fresh." 

" Where will you go, Stephen 1 " 

" I donno t'night," said he, lifting off his hat, and smoothing his 
thin hair with the flat of his hand. " But I'm not goin t'night, 
Rachael, nor jqI t'morrow. Tan't easy overmuch, t' know wheer 
t' turn, but a good heart will coom to me." 

Herein, too, the sense of even thinking unselfishly aided him. 
Before he had so much as closed Mr. Bounderby's door, he had 
reflected that at least his being obliged to go away was good for 
her, as it would save her from the chance of being brought into 
question for not withdrawing from him. Though it would cost him 
a hard pang to leave her, and though he could think of no similar 
place in which his condemnation would not pursue him, perhaps it 
was almost a relief to be forced away from the endurance of the 
last four days, even to unknown difficulties and distresses. 

So he said, with truth, " I'm more leetsome, Rachael, under 't, 
than I could ha believed." It was not her part to make his burden 
heavier. She answered with her comforting smile, and the three 
walked on together. 

Age, especially when it strives to be self-reliant and cheerful, 
finds much consideration among the poor. The old woman was so 
decent and contented, and made so light of her infirmities, though 
they had increased upon her since her former interview with 
Stephen, that they both took an interest in her. She was too 
sprightly to allow of their walking at a slow pace on her account, 
but she was very grateful to be talked to, and very willing to talk 
to any extent : so, when they came to their part of the town, she 
was more brisk and vivacious than ever. 

"Coom to my poor place, missus," said Stephen, "and tak a 
coop o' tea. Rachael will coom then ; and arterwards I'll see thee 
safe t' thy Travellers' lodgin. 'T may be long, Rachael, ere ever 
I ha th' chance o' thy coompany agen." 

They complied, and the three went on to the house where he 



HARD TIMES. 545 

lodged. When they turned mto a narrow street, Stephen glanced 
at his window with a dread that always haunted his desolate home ; 
but it was open, as he had left it, and no one was there. The evil 
spirit of his life had flitted away again, months ago, and he had 
heard no more of her since. The only evidence of lier last return 
now, were the scantier movables in his room, and the greyer hair 
upon his head. 

He lighted a candle, set out his little tea-board, got hot water 
from below, and brought in small portions of tea and sugar, a loaf, 
and some butter from the nearest shop. The bread was new and 
crusty, the butter fresh, and the sugar lump, of course — in fulfil- 
ment of the standard testimony of the Coketown magnates, that 
these people lived like princes, sir. Kachael made the tea (so large a 
party necessitated the borrowing of a cup), and the visitor enjoyed 
it mightily. It was the first glimpse of sociality the host had 
had for many days. He too, with the world a wide heath before 
him, enjoyed the meal — again in corroboration of the magnates, as 
exemplifying the utter want of calculation on the part of these 
people, sir. 

"I ha never thowt yet, missus," said Stephen, "o' askin thy 
name." 

The old lady announced herself as ''Mrs. Pegler." 

" A widder, I think 1 " said Stephen. 

" Oh, many long years ! " Mrs. Pegler's husband (one of the 
best on record) was already dead, by Mrs. Pegler's calculation, when 
Stephen was born. 

" 'Twere a bad job, too, to lose so good a one," said Stephen. 
" Onny children ? " 

Mrs. Pegler's cup, rattling against her saucer as she held it, 
denoted some nervousness on her part. "No," she said. "Not 
now, not now." 

" Dead, Stephen," Eachael softly hinted. 

" I'm sooary I ha spok'n on 't," said Stephen, " I ought t' hacln 
in my mind as I might touch a sore place. I — I blame my- 
seln." 

While he excused himself, the old lady's cup rattled more and 
more. " I had a son," she said, curiously distressed, and not by 
any of the usual appearances of sorrow ; " and he did well, wonder- 
fully well. But he is not to be spoken of if you please. He 
is — " Putting down her cup, she moved her hands as if she 
would have added, by her action, " dead ! " Then she said aloud, 
" I have lost him." 

Stephen had not yet got the better of his having given the old lady 
pain, when his landlady came stumbling up the narrow stairs, and 



546 HARD TIMES. 

calling him to the door, whispered in his ear. Mrs. Pegler was by 
no means deaf, for she caught a word as it was uttered. 

" Bounderby ! " she cried, in a suppressed voice, starting up from 
the table. " Oh hide me ! Don't let me be seen for the world. 
Don't let him come up till I've got away. Pray, pray ! " She 
trembled, and was excessively agitated ; getting behind Rachael, 
when Rachael tried to reassure her; and not seeming to know 
what she was about. 

"But hearken, missus, hearken;" said Stephen, astonished. 
"'Tisn't Mr. Bounderby; 'tis his wife. Yor not fearfo' o' her. 
Yo was hey-go-mad about her, but an hour sin." 

" But are you sure it's the lady, and ilot the gentleman ? " she 
asked, still trembling. 

" Certain sure ! " 

" Well then, pray don't speak to me, nor yet take any notice of 
me," said the old woman. "Let me be quite to myself in this 
corner." 

Stephen nodded ; looking to Rachael for an explanation, which 
she was quite unable to give him ; took the candle, went down- 
stairs, and in a few moments returned, lighting Louisa into the 
room. She was followed by the whelp. 

Rachael had risen, and stood apart with her shawl and bonnet 
in her hand, when Stephen, himself profoundly astonished by this 
visit, put the candle on the table. Then he too stood, with his 
doubled hand upon the table near it, waiting to be addressed. 

For the first time in her life Louisa had come into one of the 
dwellings of the Coketown Hands ; for the first time in her life 
she was face to face with anything like individuality in connection 
with them. She knew of their existence by hundreds and by 
thousands. She knew what results in work a given number of 
them would produce in a given space of time. She knew them in 
crowds passing to and from their nests, like ants or beetles. But 
she knew from her reading infinitely more of the ways of toiling 
insects than of these toiling men and women. 

Something to be worked so much and paid so much, and there 
ended ; something to be infallibly settled by laws of supply and 
demand ; something that blundered against those laws, and floun- 
dered into difl&culty; something that was a little pinched when 
wheat was dear, and over-ate itself when wheat was cheap ; some- 
thing that increased at such a rate of percentage, and yielded such 
another percentage of crime, and such another percentage of pauper- 
ism ; something wholesale, of which vast fortunes were made ; 
something that occasionally rose like a sea, and did some harm and 
waste (chiefly to itself), and fell again ; this she knew the Coke- 



HARD TIMES. 547 

town Hands to be. But, she had scarcely thought more of sepa- 
rating them into units, than of separating the sea itself into its 
component drops. 

She stood for some moments looking round the room. From the 
few chairs, the few books, the common prints, and the bed, she 
glanced to the two women, and to Stephen. 

" I have come to speak to you, in consequence of what passed 
just now. I should like to be serviceable to you, if you will let 
me. Is this your wife ? " 

Rachael raised her eyes, and they sufficiently answered no, and 
dropped again. 

"I remember," said Louisa, reddening at her mistake; "I 
recollect, now, to have heard your domestic misfortunes spoken of, 
though I was not attending to the particulars at the time. It was 
not my meaning to ask a question that would give pain to any one 
here. If I should ask any other question that may happen to have 
that result, give me credit, if you please, for being in ignorance how 
to speak to you as I ought." 

As Stephen had but a little while ago instinctively addressed 
himself to her, so she now instinctively addressed herself to Rachael. 
Her manner was short and abrupt, yet faltering and timid. 

" He has told you what has passed between himself and my 
husband ? You would be his first resource, I think." 

"I have heard the end of it, young lady," said Rachael. 

"Did I understand, that, being rejected by one employer, he 
would probably be rejected by all ? I thought he said as much ? " 

" The chances are very small, young lady — next to nothing — 
for a man who gets a bad name among them." 

" What shall I understand that you mean by a bad name ? " 

" The name of being troublesome." 

" Then, by the prejudices of his own class, and by the prejudices 
of the other, he is sacrificed alike? Are the two so deeply sepa- 
rated in this town, that there is no place whatever, for an honest 
workman between them 1 " 

Rachael shook her head in silence. 

"He fell into suspicion," said Louisa, "with his fellow- weavers, 
because he had made a promise not to be one of them. I think it 
must have been to you that he made that promise. Might I ask 
you why he made it?" 

Rachael burst into tears. "I didn't seek it of him, poor lad. 
I prayed him to avoid trouble for his own good, little thinking he'd 
come to it through me. But I know he'd die a hundred deaths, 
ere ever he'd break his word. I know that of him well." 

Stephen had remained quietly attentive, in his usual thoughtful 



548 HARD TIMES. 

attitude, with his hand at his chin. He now spoke in a voice 
rather less steady than usual. 

"Ko one, excepting myseln, can ever know what honour, an 
what love, an respect, I bear to Rachael, or wi' what cause. When 
I passed that promess, I towd her true, she were th' Angel o' my 
life. 'J^were a solemn promess. 'Tis gone fro' me, for ever." 

Louisa turned her head to him, and bent it with a deference that 
was new in her. She looked from him to Rachael, and her feat- 
ures softened. " What will you do ? " she asked him. And her 
voice had softened too. 

"Weel, ma'am," said Stephen, making the best of it, with a 
smile; "when I ha finished off, I mun quit this part, and try 
another. Fortnet or misfortnet, a man can but try ; there's nowt 
to be done wi'out tryin' — cept laying down and dying." 

" How will you travel ? " 

"Afoot, my kind ledy, afoot." 

Louisa coloured, and a purse appeared in her hand. The rustling of 
a bank-note was audible, as she unfolded one and laid it on the table. 

" Rachael, will you tell him — for you know how, without offence 
— that this is freely his, to help him on his way ? Will you entreat 
him to take it?" 

"I canna do that, young lady," she answered, turning her head 
aside ; "bless you for thinking o' the poor lad wi' such tenderness. 
But 'tis for him to know his heart, and what is right according 
to it.." 

Louisa looked, in part incredulous, in part frightened, in part 
overcome with quick sympathy, when this man of so much self- 
command, who had been so plain and steady through the late inter- 
view, lost his composure in a moment, and now stood with his hand 
before his face. She stretched out hers, as if she would have 
touched him ; then checked herself, and remained still. 

"Not e'en Rachael," said Stephen, when he stood again with his 
face uncovered, "could mak sitch a kind offerin, by onny words, 
kinder. T' show that I'm not a man wi'out reason and gratitude, 
I'll tak two pound. I'll borrow 't for t' pay 't back. 'Twill be the 
sweetest work as ever I had one, that puts it in my power t' 
acknowledge once more my lastin thankfulness for this present 
action." 

She was fain to take up the note again, and to substitute the 
much smaller sum he had named. He was neither courtly, nor 
handsome, nor picturesque, in any respect ; and yet his manner of 
accepting it, and of expressing his thanks without more words, had 
a grace in it that Lord Chesterfield could not have taught his son 
in a century. 



HARD TIMES. 549 

Tom had sat upon the bed, swinging one leg and sucking his 
walking-stick with sufficient unconcern, until the visit had attained 
this stage. Seeing his sister ready to depart, he got up, rather 
hurriedly, and put in a word. 

"Just wait a moment, Loo ! Before we go, I should like to 
speak to him a moment. Something comes into my head. If 
you'll step out on the stairs, Blackpool, I'll mention it. Never 
mind a light, man ! " Tom was remarkably impatient of his 
moving towards the cupboard, to get one. "It don't want a 
light." 

Stephen followed him out, and Tom closed the room door, and 
held the lock in his hand. 

"I say!" ]ie whispered. "I think I can do you a good turn. 
Don't ask me what it is, because it may not come to anything. 
But there's no harm in my trying." 

His breath fell like a flame of fire on Stephen's ear, it was so hot. 

"That was our light porter at the Bank," said Tom, "who 
brought you the message to-night. I call him our light porter, 
because I belong to the Bank too." 

Stephen thought, " What a hurry he is in ! " He spoke so 
confusedly. 

" WeU ! " said Tom. " Now look here ! When are you off? " 

"T' day's Monday," replied Stephen, considering. "Why, sir, 
Friday or Saturday, nigh 'bout." 

"Friday or Saturday," said Tom. "Now, look here! I am 
not sure that I can do you the good turn I want to do you — that's 
my sister, you know, in your room — but I may be able to, and if 
I should not be able to, there's no harm done. So I tell you what. 
You'll know our light porter again?" 

"Yes, sure," said Stephen. 

"Very well," returned Tom. "When you leave work of a 
night, between this and your going away, just hang about the Bank 
an hour or so, will you 1 Don't take on, as if you meant anything, 
if he should see you hanging about there; because I shan't put 
him up to speak to you, unless I find I can do you the service I 
want to do you. In that case he'll have a note or a message for 
you, but not else. Now look here ! You are sure you under- 
stand." 

He had wormed a finger, in the darkness, through a buttonhole 
of Stephen's coat, and was screwing that corner of the garment 
tight up round and round, in an extraordinaiy manner. 

" I understand, sir," said Stephen. 

"Now look here ! " repeated Tom. "Be sure you don't make 
any mistake then, and don't forget. I shall tell my sister as we go 



550 HARD TIMES. 

home, what I have in view, and she'll approve, I know. Now 
look here ! You're all right, are you ? You understand all about 
it ? Veiy well then. Come along. Loo ! " 

He pushed the door open as he called to her, but did not return 
into the room, or wait to be lighted down the narrow stairs. He 
was at the bottom when she began to descend, and was in the street 
before she could take his arm. 

Mrs. Pegler remained in her comer until the brother and sister 
were gone, and until Stephen came back mth the candle in his 
hand. She was in a state of inexpressible admiration of Mrs. 
Bounderby, and, like an unaccountable old woman, wept, "because 
she was such a pretty dear." Yet Mrs. Pegler was so flurried lest 
the object of her admiration should return by chance, or anybody 
else should come, that her cheerfulness was ended for that night. 
It was late too, to people who rose early and worked hard ; there- 
fore the party broke up ; and Stephen and Rachael escorted their 
mysterious acquaintance to the door of the Travellers' Coffee House, 
where they parted from her. 

They walked back together to the corner of the street where 
Rachael lived, and as they drew nearer and nearer to it, silence crept 
upon them. When they came to the dark corner where their unfre- 
quent meetings always ended, they stopped, still silent, as if both 
were afraid to speak. 

"I shall strive t' see thee agen, Rachael, afore I go, but if 
not " 

"Thou wilt not, Stephen, I know. 'Tis better that we make 
up our minds to be open wi' one another." 

"Thou'rt awlus right. 'Tis bolder and better. I ha been 
thinkin then, Rachael, that as 'tis but a day or two that remains, 
'twere better for thee, my dear, not t' be seen wi' me. 'T might 
bring thee into trouble, fur no good." 

" 'Tis not for that, Stephen, that I mind. But thou know'st our 
old agreement. 'Tis for that." 

"Well, well," said he. "'Tis better, onnyways." 

" Thou'lt write to me, and tell me all that happens, Stephen?" 

"Yes. What can I say now, but Heaven be wi' thee. Heaven 
bless thee. Heaven thank thee and reward thee ! " 

"May it bless thee, Stephen, too, in all thy wanderings, and 
send thee peace and rest at last ! " 

"I towd thee, my dear," said Stephen Blackpool — " that night 
— that I would never see or think o' onnything that angered me, 
but thou, so much better than me, should'st be beside it. Thou'rt 
beside it now. Thou mak'st me see it wi' a better eye. Bless 
thee. Good night. Good bye ! " 



i 



HAKD TIMES. 551 

It was but a hurried parting in a common street, yet it was a 
sacred remembrance to these two common people. Utilitarian 
economists, skeletons of schoolmasters. Commissioners of Fact, gen- 
teel and used-up infidels, gabblers of many little dog's-eared creeds, 
the poor you will have always with you. Cultivate in them, while 
there is yet time, the utmost graces of the fancies and affections, to 
adorn their lives so much in need of ornament ; or,* in the day of 
your triumph, when romance is utterly driven out of their souls, 
and they and a bare existence stand face to face, Reality will take 
a wolfish turn, and make an end of you. 

Stephen worked the next day, and the next, uncheered by a word 
from any one, and shunned in all his comings and goings as before. 
At the end of the second day, he saw land ; at the end of the third, 
his loom stood empty. 

He had overstayed his hour in the street outside the Bank, on 
each of the two first evenings ; and nothing had happened there, 
good or bad. That he might not be remiss in his part of the 
engagement, he resolved to wait full two hours, on this third and 
last night. 

There was the lady who had once kept Mr. Bounderby's house, 
sitting at the first floor window as he had seen her before ; and 
there was the light porter, sometimes talking with her there, and 
sometimes looking over the blind below which had Bank upon it, 
and sometimes coming to the door and standing on the steps for a 
breath of air. When he first came out, Stephen thought he might 
be looking for him, and passed near; but the light porter only 
cast his winking eyes upon him slightly, and said nothing. 

Two hours were a long stretch of lounging about, after a long 
day's labour. Stephen sat upon the step of a door, leaned against a 
wall under an archway, strolled up and down, listened for the church 
clock, stopped and watched children playing in the street. Some 
purpose or other is so natural to every one, that a mere loiterer 
always looks and feels remarkable. When the first hour was out, 
Stephen even began to have an uncomfortable sensation upon him 
of being for the time the disreputable character. 

Then came the lamplighter, and two lengthening lines of light 
all down the long perspective of the street, until they were blended 
and lost in the distance. Mrs. Sparsit closed the first floor window, 
drew down the blind, and went upstairs. Presently, a light went 
upstairs after her, passing first the fanlight of the door, and after- 
wards the two staircase windows, on its way up. By-and-bye, one 
corner of the second floor blind was disturbed, as if Mrs. Sparsit's 
eye were there ; also the other corner, as if the light porter's eye 
were on that side. Still, no communication was made to Stephen. 



552 HARD TIMES. 

Much relieved when the two hours were at last accomplished, he 
went away at a quick pace, as a recompense for so much loitering. 

He had only to take leave of his landlady, and lie down on his 
temporary bed upon the floor ; for his bundle was made up for 
to-morrow, and all was arranged for his departure. He meant to 
be clear of the town very early ; before the Hands were in the 
streets. 

It was barely daybreak, when, with a parting look round his 
room, mournfully wondering whether he should ever see it again, 
he went out. The town was as entirely deserted as if the inhabi- 
tants had abandoned it, rather than hold communication with him. 
Everything looked wan at that hour. Even the coming sun made 
but a pale waste in the sky, like a sad sea. 

By the place where Kachael lived, though it was not in his way ; 
by the red brick streets ; by the great silent factories, not trem- 
bling yet ; by the railway, where the danger-lights were waning in 
the strengthening day ; by the railway's crazy neighbourhood, half 
pulled down and half built up; by scattered red brick villas, 
where the besmoked evergreens were sprinkled with a dirty pow- 
der, like untidy snufF-takers ; by coal-dust paths and many varie- 
ties of ugliness ; Stephen got to the top of the hill, and looked back. 

Day was shining radiantly upon the town then, and the bells 
were going for the morning work. Domestic fires were not yet 
lighted, and the high chimneys had the sky to themselves. Puff- 
ing out their poisonous volumes, they would not be long in hiding 
it ; but, for half an hour, some of the many windows were golden, 
which showed the Coketown people a sun eternally in eclipse, 
through a medium of smoked glass. 

So strange to turn from the chimneys to the birds. So strange 
to have the road-dust on his feet instead of the coal-grit. So 
strange to have lived to his time of life, and yet to be beginning 
like a boy this summer morning ! With these musings in his 
mind, and his bundle under his arm, Stephen took his attentive 
face along the high road. And the trees arched over him, whis- 
pering that he left a true and loving heart behind. 



CHAPTER VII. 

GUNPOWDER. 

Mr. James Harthouse, "going in" for his adopted party, 
soon began to score. With the aid of a little more coaching for 
the political sages, a little more genteel listlessness for the general 



HARD TIMES. 553 

society, and a tolerable management of the assumed honesty in 
dishonesty, most effective and most patronised of the polite deadly 
sins, he speedily came to be considered of much promise. The 
not being troubled with earnestness was a grand point in his favour, 
enabling him to take to the hard Fact fellows with as good a grace 
as if he had been born one of the tribe, and to throw all other 
tribes overboard, as conscious hypocrites. 

" Whom none of us believe, my dear Mrs. Bounderby, and who 
do not believe themselves. The only difference between us and 
the professors of virtue or benevolence, or philanthropy — never 
mind the name — is, that we know it is all meaningless, and say 
so ; while they know it equally and will never say so." 

Why should she be shocked or warned by this reiteration 1 It 
was not so unlike her father's principles, and her early training, 
that it need startle her. Where was the great difference between 
the two schools, when each chained her down to material realities, 
and inspired her with no faith in anything else ? What was there 
in her soul for James Harthouse to destroy, which Thomas Grad- 
grind had nurtured there in its state of innocence ! 

It was even the worse for her at this pass, that in her mind — 
implanted there before her eminently practical father began to 
form it — a struggling disposition to believe in a wider and nobler 
humanity than she had ever heard of constantly strove with doubts 
and resentments. With doubts, because the aspiration had been 
so laid waste in her youth. With resentments, because of the 
wrong that had been done her, if it were indeed a whisper of 
the truth. Upon a nature long accustomed to self-suppression, 
thus torn and divided, the Harthouse philosophy came as a relief 
and justification. Everything being hollow and worthless, she 
had missed nothing and sacrificed nothing. What did it mat- 
ter, she had said to her father, when he proposed her husband. 
What did it matter, she said still. With a scornful self-reliance, 
she asked herself, What did anything matter — and went on. 

Towards what ? Step by step, onward and downward, towards 
some end, yet so gradually, that she believed herself to remain 
motionless. As to Mr. Harthouse, whither he tended, he neither 
considered nor cared. He had no particular design or plan before 
him : no energetic wickedness ruffled his lassitude. He was as 
much amused and interested, at present, as it became so fine a 
gentleman to be ; perhaps even more than it would have been con- 
sistent with his reputation to confess. Soon after his arrival he 
languidly wrote to his brother, the honourable and jocular member, 
that the Bounderbys w^re "great fun;" and further, that the 
female Bounderby, instead of being the Gorgon he had expected, 



554 HARD TIMES. 

was young, and remarkably pretty. After that, he wrote no more 
about them, and devoted his leisure chiefly to their house. He 
was very often in their house, in his flittings and visitings about 
the Coketown district ; and was much encouraged by Mr. Boun- 
derby. It was quite in Mr. Bounderby's gusty way to boast to 
all his world that he didn't care about your highly connected 
people, but that if his wife Tom Gradgrind's daughter did, she 
was welcome to their company. 

Mr. James Harthouse began to think it would be a new sensa- 
tion, if the face which changed so beautifully for the whelp, would 
change for him. 

He was quick enough to observe ; he had a good memory, and 
did not forget a word of the brother's revelations. He interwove 
them with everything he saw of the sister, and he began to under- 
stand her. To be sure, the better and profounder part of her 
character was not ^^ithin his scope of perception ; for in natures, 
as in seas, depth answers unto depth ; but he soon began to read 
the rest with a student's eye. 

Mr. Bounderby had taken possession of a house and grounds, 
about fifteen miles from the town, and accessible within a mile or 
two, by a railway striding on many arches over a wild country, 
undermined by deserted coal-shafts, and spotted at night by fires 
and black shapes of stationary engines at pits' mouths. This 
country, gradually softening towards the neighbourhood of Mr. 
Bounderby's retreat, there mellowed into a rustic landscape, golden 
with heath, and sno^T" with hawthorn in the spring of the year, 
and tremulous with leaves and their shadows all the summer time. 
The bank had foreclosed a mortgage effected on the property thus 
pleasantly situated, by one of the Coketown magnates, who, in his 
determination to make a shorter cut than usual to an enormous 
fortune, overspeculated himself by about two hundred thousand 
pounds. These accidents did sometimes happen in the best regu- 
lated families of Coketown, but the bankrupts had no connection 
whatever with the improvident classes. 

It afforded Mr. Bounderby supreme satisfaction to install him- 
self in this snug little estate, and with demonstrative humility to 
grow cabbages in the flower-garden. He delighted to live, barrack- 
fashion, among the elegant furniture, and he buUied the very pict- 
ures with his origin. " Why, sir," he would say to a visitor, " I 
am told that ISTickits," the late owner, " gave seven hundred pound 
for that Seabeach. Now, to be plain with you, if I ever, in the 
whole course of my life, take seven looks at it, at a hundred pound 
a look, it ^^^ll be as much as I shall do. No, by George ! I don't 
forget that I am Josiah Bounderby of Coketown. For years upon 



HARD TIMES. 555 

years, the only pictures in my possession, or that I could have got 
into my possession, by any means, unless I stole 'em, were the 
engravings of a man shaving himself in a boot, on the blacking 
bottles that I was overjoyed to use in cleaning boots with, and 
that I sold when they were empty for a farthing apiece, and glad 
to get it ! " 

Then he would address Mr. Harthouse in the same style. 

"Harthouse, you have a couple of horses down here. Bring 
half a dozen more if you like, and we'll find room for 'em. There's 
stabling in this place for a dozen horses ; and unless Nickits is 
belied, he kept the full number. A round dozen of 'em, sir. When 
that man was a boy, he went to Westminster School. Went to 
Westminster School as a King's Scholar, when I was principally 
living on garbage, and sleeping in market baskets. Why, if I 
wanted to keep a dozen horses — which I don't, for one's enough 
for me — I couldn't bear to see 'em in their stalls here, and think 
what my own lodging used to be. I couldn't look at 'em, sir, and 
not order 'em out. Yet so things come round. You see this place ; 
you know what sort of a place it is ; you are aware that there's 
not a completer place of its size in this kingdom or elsewhere — I 
don't care where — and here, got into the middle of it, like a 
maggot into a nut, is Josiah Bounderby. While Nickits (as a man 
came into my office, and told me yesterday), Nickits, who used to 
act in Latin, in the Westminster School plays, with the chief- 
justices and nobility of this country applauding him till they were 
black in the face, is drivelling at this minute — drivelling, sir ! — 
in a fifth floor, up a narrow dark back street in Antwerp." 

It was among the leafy shadows of this retirement, in the long 
sultry summer days, that Mr. Harthouse began to prove the face 
which had set him wondering when he first saw it, and to try if it 
would change for him. 

" Mrs, Bounderby, I esteem it a most fortunate accident that I 
find you alone here. I have for some time had a particular msh 
to speak to you." 

It was not by any wonderful accident that he found her, the 
time of day being that at which she was always alone, and the 
place being her favourite resort. It was an opening in a dark 
wood, where some felled trees lay, and where she would sit watch- 
ing the fallen leaves of last year, as she had watched the falling 
ashes at home. 

He sat down beside her, with a glance at her face. 

" Your brother. My young friend Tom — " 

Her colour brightened, and she turned to him with a look of 
interest. '*'I never in my life," he thought, "saw anything so 



556 HAED TIMES. 

remarkable and so captivating as the lighting of those features ! " 
His face betrayed his thoughts — perhaps without betraying him, 
for it might have been according to its instructions so to do. 

"Pardon me. The expression of your sisterly interest is so 
beautiful — Tom should be so proud of it — I know this is inexcus- 
able, but I am so compelled to admire." 

" Being so impulsive," she said composedly. 

" Mrs. Bounderby, no : you know I make no pretence with you. 
You know I am a sordid piece of human nature, ready to sell myself 
at any time for any reasonable sum, and altogether incapable of 
any Arcadian proceeding whatever." 

" I am waiting," she returned, "for your further reference to my 
brother." 

" You are rigid T^dth me, and I deserve it. I am as worthless a 
dog as you will find, except that I am not false — not false. But 
you surprised and started me from my subject, which was your 
brother. I have an interest in him." 

" Have you an interest in anything, Mr. Harthouse ? " she asked, 
half incredulously and half gratefully. 

" If you had asked me when I first came here, I should have 
said no. I must say now — even at the hazard of appearing to 
make a pretence, and of justly awakening your incredulity — yes." 

She made a slight movement, as if she were trying to speak, but 
could not find voice ; at length she said, " Mr. Harthouse, I give 
you credit for being interested in my brother." 

" Thank you. I claim to deserve it. You know how little I 
do claim, but I will go that length. You have done so much for 
him, you are so fond of him ; your whole life, Mrs. Bounderby, 
expresses such charming self-forgetfulness on his account — pardon 
me again — I am running wide of the subject. I am interested in 
him for his own sake." 

She had made the slightest action possible, as if she would have 
risen in a hurry and gone away. He had turned the course of 
what he said at that instant, and she remained. 

"Mrs. Bounderby," he resumed, in a lighter manner, and yet 
with a show of effort in assuming it, which was even more expres- 
sive than the manner he dismissed ; " it is no irrevocable oftence 
in a young fellow of your brother's years, if he is heedless, incon- 
siderate, and expensive — a little dissipated, in the common phrase. 
Is he?" 

"Yes." 

" Allow me to be frank. Do you think he games at all ? " 

"I think he makes bets." Mr. Harthouse waiting, as if that 
were not her whole answer, she added, " I know he does." 



HARD TDIES. 557 

" Of course he loses ? " 

"Yes." 

" Everybody does lose who bets. May I hint at the probability 
of your sometimes supiDlying him with money for these purposes ? " 

She sat, looking down ; but, at this question, raised her eyes 
searchingly and a httle resentfully. 

" Acquit me of impertinent curiosity, my dear Mrs. Bounderby. 
I think Tom may be gradually falhng into trouble, and I wish to 
stretch out a helping hand to him from the depths of my wicked 
experience. — Shall I say again, for his sake 1 Is that necessary ? " 

She seemed to tiy to answer, but nothing came of it. 

" Candidly to confess everything that has occurred to me,"" said 
James Harthouse, again gliding with the same appearance of effort 
into his more airy manner; "I will confide to you my doubt 
whether he has had many advantages. 'Whether — forgive my 
plainness — whether any great amount of confidence is likely to 
have been estabhshed between himself and his most worthy 
father.-"' 

"I do not,'"'" said Louisa, flushing with her own great remem- 
brance in that wise, " think it likely." 

" Or, between himself, and — I may trust to your perfect under- 
stancUng of my meaning, I am sure — and his highly esteemed 
brother-in-law.'"' 

She flushed deeper and deeper, and was burning red when she 
replied in a fainter voice, " I do not think that likely, either." 

"Mrs. Bounderby," said Harthouse, after a short silence, "may 
there be a better confidence between yourself and me ? Tom has 
borrowed a considerable sum of you ? " 

" You wlQ understand, Mr. Harthouse," she returned, after some 
indecision : she had been more or less uncertain, and troubled 
throughout the conversation, and yet had in the main preserved her 
self-contained manner; "you will understand that if I tell you 
what you press to know, it is not by way of complaint or regret, 
I woidd never complain of anything, and what I have done I do 
not in the least regret." 

" So spirited, too ! " thought James Harthouse. 

"When I married, I found that my brother was even at that 
time heavily in debt. Heavily for him, I mean. Heavily enough 
to obhge me to sell some trinkets. They were no sacrifice. I sold 
them very willingly. I attached no value to them. They were 
quite worthless to me." 

Either she saw in his face that he knew, or she only feared in 
her conscience that he knew, that she spoke of some of her hus-' 
band's gifts. She stopped, and reddened again. If he had not 



558 HARD TIMES. 

known it before, he would have known it then, though he had 
been a much duller man than he was. 

" Since then, I have given my brother, at various times, what 
money I could spare : in short, what money I have had. Confid- 
ing in you at all, on the faith of the interest you profess for him, 
I will not do so by halves. Since you have been in the habit of 
visiting here, he has wanted in one sum as much as a hundred 
pounds. I have not been able to give it to him. I have felt 
uneasy for the consequences of his being so involved, but I have 
kept these secrets until now, when I trust them to your honour. I 
have held no confidence with any one, because — you anticipated 
my reason just now." She abruptly broke off. 

He was a ready man, and he saw, and seized, an opportunity here 
of presenting her own image to her, slightly disguised as her brother. 

"Mrs. Bounderby, though a graceless person, of the world 
worldly, I feel the utmost interest, I assure you, in what you tell 
me. I cannot possibly be hard upon your brother. I understand 
and share the wise consideration with which you regard his errors. 
With all possible respect both for Mr. Gradgrind and for Mr. 
Bounderby, I think I perceive that he has not been fortunate 
in his training. Bred at a disadvantage towards the society in 
which he has his part to play, he rushes into these extremes for 
himself, from opposite extremes that have long been forced — with 
the very best intentions we have no doubt — upon him. Mr. Boun- 
derby's fine bluff English independence, though a most charming 
characteristic, does not — as we have agreed — invite confidence. 
If I might venture to remark that it is the least in the world 
deficient in that delicacy to which a youth mistaken, a character 
misconceived, and abilities misdirected, would turn for relief and 
guidance, I should express what it presents to my own view." 

As she sat looking straight before her, across the changing lights 
upon the grass into the darkness of the wood beyond, he saw in 
her face her application of his very distinctly uttered words. 

"All allowance," he continued, "must be made. I have one 
great fault to find with Tom, however, which I cannot forgive, and 
for which I take him heavily to account." 

Louisa turned her eyes to his face, and asked him what fault 
was that ? " 

"Perhaps," he returned, "I have said enough. Perhaps it 
would have been better, on the whole, if no allusion to it had 
escaped me." 

" You alarm me, Mr. Harthouse. Pray let me know it." 

"To relieve you from needless apprehension — and as this confi- 
dence regarding your brother, which I prize I am sure above all 



HAED TIMES. 559 

possible things, has been established between us — I obey. I 
cannot forgive him for not being more sensible in every word, look, 
and act of his life, of the affection of his best friend ; of the devo- 
tion of his best friend ; of her unselfishness ; of her sacrifice. The 
return he makes her, within my observation, is a very poor one. 
AMiat she has done for him demands his constant love and grati- 
tude, not his ill-humour and caprice. Careless fellow as I am, I 
am not so indifferent, Mrs. Bounderby, as to be regardless of this 
vice in your brother, or inclined to consider it a venial offence." 

The wood floated before her, for her eyes were suffused with 
tears. They rose from a deep well, long concealed, and her heart 
was filled with acute pain that found no relief in them. 

" In a word, it is to correct your brother in this, Mrs. Boun- 
derby, that I must aspire. My better knowledge of his circum- 
stances, and my direction and advice in extricating them — rather 
valuable, I hope, as coming from a scapegi'ace on a much larger 
scale — - will give me some influence over him, and all I gain I shall 
certainly use towards this end. I have said enough, and more 
than enough. I seem to be protesting that I am a sort of good 
fellow, when, upon my honour, I have not the least intention to 
make any protestation to that effect, and openly announce that I 
am nothing of the sort. Yonder, among the trees," he added, 
having lifted up his eyes and looked about ; for he had watched 
her closely until now; "is your brother himself; no doubt, just 
come down. As he seems to be loitering in this direction, it may 
be as well, perhaps, to walk towards him, and throw ourselves in 
his way. He has been very silent and doleful of late. Perhaps, 
his brotherly conscience is touched — if there are such things as 
consciences. Though, upon my honour, I hear of them much too 
often to believe in them." 

He assisted her to rise, and she took his arm, and they advanced 
to meet the whelp. He was idly beating the branches as he 
lounged along : or he stooped viciously to rip the moss from the 
trees with his stick. He was startled when they came upon him 
while he was engaged in this latter pastime, and his colour changed. 

" Halloa I " he stammered ; " I didn't know you were here." 

""\Miose name, Tom," said Mr. Harthouse, putting his hand 
upon his shoulder and turning him, so that they all three walked 
towards the house together, " have you been carving on the trees 1 " 

" Whose name ? " returned Tom. " Oh ! You mean what girl's 
name 1 " 

" You have a suspicious appearance of inscribing some fair creat- 
ure's on the bark, Tom." 

"!N"ot much of that, Mr. Harthouse, unless some fair creature 



560 HARD TBIES. 

with a slashing fortune at her own disposal would take a fancy to 
me. Or she might be as ugly as she was rich, without any fear 
of losing me. I'd carve her name as often as she liked." 

" I am afraid you are mercenary, Tom." 

" Mercenaiy," repeated Tom. " Who is not mercenary ? Ask my 
sister." 

" Have you so proved it to be a failing of mine, Tom ? " said 
Louisa, showing no other sense of his discontent and ill-nature. 

"You know whether the cap fits you. Loo," returned her 
brother sulkily. " If it does, you can wear it." 

" Tom is misanthropical to-day, as all bored people are now and 
then," said Mr. Harthouse. "Don't beheve him, Mrs. Bounderby. 
He knows much better. I shall disclose some of his opinions of 
you, privately expressed to me, unless he relents a little." 

"At all events, Mr. Harthouse," said Tom, softening in his ad- 
miration of his patron, but shaking his head sullenly too, "you 
can't teU her that I ever praised her for being mercenary. I may 
have praised her for being the contrary, and I should do it again, 
if I had as good reason. However, never mind this now ; it's not 
very interesting to you, and I am sick of the subject." 

They walked on to the house, where Louisa quitted her visitor's 
arm and went in. He stood looking after her, as she ascended the 
steps, and passed into the shadow of the door ; then put his hand 
upon her brother's shoulder again, and invited him with a confiden- 
tial nod to a walk in the garden. 

" Tom, my fine fellow, I want to have a word with you." 

They had stopped among a disorder of roses — it was part of 
Mr. Bounderby's humility to keep Xickits's roses on a reduced 
scale — and Tom sat down on a terrace-parapet, plucking buds 
and picking them to pieces ; while his poweiful Famihar stood 
over him, with a foot upon the parapet, and his figure easily rest- 
ing on the arm supported by that knee. They were just visible 
from her window. Perhaps she saw them. 

" Tom, what's the matter ? " 

" Oh ! Mr. Harthouse," said Tom with a groan, " I am hard up, 
and bothered out of my life." 

" My good fellow, so am I." 

" You ! " returned Tom. " You are the picture of independence. 
Iilr. Harthouse, I am in a horrible mess. You have no idea what 
a state I have got myself into — what a state my sister might 
have got me out of, if she would only have done it." 

He took to biting the rose-buds now, and tearing them away 
from his teeth with a hand that trembled hke an infirm old man's. 
After one exceedingly observant look at him, his companion re- 
lapsed into his lightest air. 




MR. HARTHOUSE AND TOM GRADGRIND IN THE GARDEN. 



562 HARD TIMES. 

" Tom, you are inconsiderate : you expect too much of your 
sister. You have had money of her, you dog, you know you 
have." 

" Well, Mr. Harthouse, I know I have. How else was I to get 
it? Here's old Bounderby always boasting that at my age he 
lived upon twopence a mouth, or something of that sort. Here's 
my father drawing what he calls a line, and tying me down to it 
from a baby, neck and heels. Here's my mother who never has 
anything of her own, except her complaints. What is a fellow to 
do for money, and where am I to look for it, if not to my sister ? " 

He was almost crying, and scattered the buds about by dozens. 
Mr. Harthouse took him persuasively by the coat. 

" But, my dear Tom, if your sister has not got it — " 

" Not got it, Mr. Harthouse ? I don't say she has got it. I 
may have wanted more than she was likely to have got. But 
then she ought to get it. She could get it. It's of no use pre- 
tending to make a secret of matters now, after what I have told 
you already; you know she didn't marry old Bounderby for her 
own sake, or for his sake, but for my sake. Then why doesn't 
she get what I want, out of him, for my sake ? She is not obliged 
to say what she is going to do with it ; she is sharp enough ; she 
could manage to coax it out of him, if she chose. Then why 
doesn't she choose, when I tell her of what consequence it is? 
But no. There she sits in his company like a stone, instead of 
making herself agreeable and getting it easily. I don't know what 
you may call this, but / call it unnatural conduct." 

There was a piece of ornamental water immediately below the 
parapet, on the other side, into which Mr. James' Harthouse had a 
very strong inclination to pitch Mr. Thomas Gradgrind Junior, as 
the injured men of Coketown threatened to pitch their property 
into the Atlantic, But he preserved his easy attitude ; and noth- 
ing more solid went over the stone balustrades than the accumu- 
lated rose-buds now floating about, a little surface-island. 

"My dear Tom," said Harthouse, "let me try to be your 
banker." 

"For God's sake," replied Tom, suddenly, "don't talk about 
bankers ! " And very white he looked, in contrast with the roses. 
Very white. 

Mr. Harthouse, as a thoroughly well-bred man, accustomed to 
the best society, was not to be surprised — he could as soon have 
been affected — but he raised his eyelids a little more, as if they 
were lifted by a feeble touch of wonder. Albeit it was as much 
against the precepts of his school to wonder, as it was against the 
doctrines of the Gradgrind College. 



HARD TIMES. 563 

" What is the present need, Tom ? Three figures ? Out with 
them. Say what they are." 

"Mr. Harthouse," returned Tom, now actually crying; and his 
tears were better than his injuries, however pitiful a figure he 
made ; "it's too late ; the money is of no use to me at present. I 
should have had it before to be of use to me. But I am very much 
obliged to you; you're a true fiiend." 

A true friend ! " Whelp, whelp ! " thought Mr. Harthouse, 
lazily; " what an Ass you are ! " 

" And I take your ofi"er as a great kindness," said Tom, grasping 
his hand. "As a great kindness, Mr. Harthouse." 

"Well," returned the other, "it may be of more use by-and-bye. 
And my good fellow, if you will open your bedevilments to me 
when they come thick upon you, I may show you better ways out 
of them than you can find for yourself." 

"Thank you," said Tom, shaking his head dismally, and chew- 
ing rose-buds. "I wish I had known you sooner, Mr. Harthouse." 

"xs"ow, you see, Tom," said Mr. Harthouse in conclusion, himself 
tossing over a rose or two, as a contribution to the island, which 
was always drifting to the wall as if it wanted to become a part of 
the mainland : "every man is selfish in everything he does, and I 
am exactly like the rest of my fellow-creatures. I am desperately 
intent;" the languor of his desperation being quite tropical; "on 
your softening towards your sister — which you ought to do ; and 
on your being a more loving and agreeable sort of brother — which 
you ought to be." 

" I will be, Mr. Harthouse." 

"No time like the present, Tom. Begin at once." 

"Certainly I will. And my sister Loo shall say so." 

"Having made which bargain, Tom," said Harthouse, clapping 
him on the shoulder again, with an air which left him at liberty to 
infer — as he did, poor fool — that this condition was imposed 
upon him in mere careless good-nature to lessen his sense of obli- 
gation, " we will tear ourselves asunder until dinner-time." 

When Tom appeared before dinner, though his mind seemed 
heav}^ enough, his body was on the alert ; and he appeared before 
Mr. Bounderby came in. "I didn't mean to be cross. Loo," he 
said, giving her his hand, and kissing her. " I know you are fond 
of me, and you know I am fond of you." 

After this, there was a smile upon Louisa's face that day, for 
some one else. Alas, for some one else ! 

" So much the less is the whelp the only creature that she cares for," 
thought James Harthouse, reversing the reflection of his first day's 
knowledge of her pretty face. " So much the less, so much the less." 



664 HARD TIMES. 

CHAPTER VIII. 

EXPLOSION. 

The next morning was too bright a morning for sleep, and 
James Harthouse rose early, and sat in the pleasant bay window 
of his dressing-room, smoking the rare tobacco that had had so 
wholesome an influence on his young friend. Reposing in the sun- 
light, with the fragrance of his eastern pipe about him, and the 
dreamy smoke vanishing into the air, so rich and soft with sum- 
mer odours, he reckoned up his advantages as an idle winner might 
count his gains. He was not at all bored for the time, and could 
give his mind to it. 

He had established a confidence with her, from which her hus- 
band was excluded. He had established a confidence with her, 
that absolutely turned upon her indifference towards her husband, 
and the absence, now and at all times, of any congeniality between 
them. He had artfully, but plainly assured her, that he knew 
her heart in its last most delicate recesses ; he had come so near to 
her through its tenderest sentiment; he had associated himself 
with that feeling; and the barrier behind which she lived, had 
melted away. All very odd, and very satisfactory ! 

And yet he had not, even now, any earnest wickedness of pur- 
pose in him. Publicly and privately, it were much better for the 
age in which he lived, that he and the legion of whom he was 
one were designedly bad, than indifferent and purposeless. It is 
the drifting icebergs setting with any current anywhere, that 
wreck the ships. 

When the Devil goeth about like a roaring lion, he goeth about 
in a shape by which few but savages and hunters are attracted. 
But, when he is trimmed, smoothed, and varnished, according to 
the mode : when he is aweary of vice, and aweary of virtue, used 
up as to brimstone, and used up as to bliss ; then, whether he 
take to the serving out of red tape, or to the kindling of red fire, 
he is the very Devil. 

So, James Harthouse reclined in the Avindow, indolently smok- 
ing, and reckoning up the steps he had taken on the road by 
which he happened to be travelling. The end to which it led was 
before him, pretty plainly ; but he troubled himself with no calcu- 
lations about it. What will be, will be. 

As he had rather a long ride to take that day — for there was a 
public occasion "to do " at some distance, which afforded a toler- 
able opportunity of going in for the Gradgrind men — he dressed 
early, and went down to breakfast. He was anxious to see if she 



HARD TIMES. 565 

had relapsed since the previous evening. No. He resumed where 
he had left off. There was a look of interest for him again. 

He got through the day as much (or as little) to his own satis- 
faction, as was to be expected under the fatiguing circumstances ; 
and came riding back at six o'clock. There was a sweep of some 
half mile between the lodge and the house, and he was riding 
along at a foot pace over the smooth gravel, once Nickits's, when 
Mr. Bounderby burst out of the shrubbery, with such violence as 
to make his horse shy across the road. 

" Harthouse ! " cried Mr. Bounderby. " Have you heard 1 " 

" Heard what ? " said Harthouse, soothing his horse, and inwardly 
favouring Mr. Bounderby with no good wishes. 

" Then you havenH heard ! " 

" I have heard you, and so has this brute. I have heard noth- 
ing else." 

Mr. Bounderby, red and hot, planted himself in the centre of 
the path before the horse's head, to explode his bombshell with 
more effect. 

" The Bank's robbed ! " . 

" You don't mean it ! " 

" Robbed last night, sir. Robbed in an extraordinary manner. 
Robbed with a false key." 

"Of much?" 

Mr. Bounderby, in his desire to make the most of it, really 
seemed mortified by being obliged to reply, " Why, no ; not of 
very much. But it might have been." 

" Of how much ? " 

" Oh ! as a sum — if you stick to a sum — of not more than a 
hundred and fifty pound," said Bounderby, with impatience. " But 
it's not the sum ; it's the fact. It's the fact of the Bank being 
robbed, that's the important circumstance. I am surprised you 
don't see it." 

"My dear Bounderby," said James, dismounting, and giving his 
bridle to his servant, " I do see it ; and am as overcome as you 
can possibly desire me to be, by the spectacle afi'orded to my men- 
tal view. Nevertheless, I may be allowed, I hope, to congratulate 
you — which I do with all my soul, I assure you — on your not 
having sustained a greater loss." 

" Thank'ee." replied Bounderby, in a short, ungracious manner. 
"But I tell you what. It might have been twenty thousand 
pound." 

" I suppose it might." 

" Suppose it might ! By the Lord, you may suppose so. By 
George ! " said Mr, Bounderby, with sundry menacing nods and 



566 HARD TIMES. 

shakes of his head. "It might have been twice twenty. There's 
no knowing what it would have been, or wouldn't have been, as it 
was, but for the fellows' being disturbed." 

Louisa had come up now, and Mrs. Sparsit, and Bitzer. 

" Here's Tom Gradgrind's daughter knows pretty well what it 
might have been, if you don't," blustered Bounderby. "Dropped, 
sir, as if she was shot when I told her ! Xever knew her do such 
a thing before. Does her credit, under the circumstances, in my 
opinion I " 

She still looked faint and pale. James Harthouse begged her 
to take his arm ; and as they moved on veiy slowly, asked her how 
the robbery had been committed. 

"Why, I am going to tell you," said Boimderby, irritably giv- 
ing his arm to Mrs. Sparsit. " If you hacbi't been so mighty par- 
ticular about the sum, I should have begim to tell you "before. 
You know this lady (for she is a lady), Mrs. Sparsit 1 " 

"I have already had the honour — " 

" Very weU. And this young man, Bitzer, you saw him too on 
the same occasion ? " Mr. Harthouse inclined liis head in assent, 
and Bitzer knuckled his forehead. 

" Very well. They live at the Bank. You know they live at 
the Bank, perhaps ? Veiy well. Yesterday afternoon, at the close 
of business hours, eveiything was put away as usual. In the 
iron room that this young fellow sleeps outside of, there was never 
mind how much. In the little safe in young Tom's closet, the 
safe used for petty purposes, there was a himdred and fifty odd 
pound." 

"A hundred and fifty-four, seven, one," said Bitzer. 

" Come ! " retorted Bounderby, stopping to wheel round upon 
him, "let's have none of i/our interruptions. It's enough to be 
robbed while you're snoring because you're too comfortable, without 
being put right with your four seven ones. I didn't snore, myself 
when I was your age, let me tell you. I hadn't victuals enough 
to snore. And I didn't four seven one. Xot if I knew it." 

Bitzer knuckled his forehead again, in a sneaking manner, and 
seemed at once particularly impressed and depressed by the instance 
last given of Mr. Boimderby's moral abstinence. 

"A himdred and fifty odd pound," resumed Mr. Bounderby. 
" That sum of money, young Tom locked in his safe, not a very 
strong safe, but that's no matter now. Everything was left, all 
right. Some time in the night, while this young fellow snored — 
Mrs. Sparsit, ma'am, you say you have heard him snore ? " 

"Sir," returned Mrs. Sparsit. "I cannot say that I have heard 
him precisely snore, and therefore must not make that statement. 



I 



HARD TIMES. 667 

But on winter evenings, when he has fallen asleep at his table, I 
have heard him, what I should prefer to describe as partially choke. 
I have heard him on such occasions produce sounds of a nature 
similar to what may be sometimes heard in Dutch clocks. Not," 
said Mrs. Sparsit, with a lofty sense of giving strict evidence, "that 
I would convey any imputation on his moral character. Far from 
it. I have always considered Bitzer a young man of the most 
upright principle ; and to that I beg to bear my testimony." 

" Well ! " said the exasperated Bounderby, " while he was snor- 
ing, or choking, or Dutch-clocking, or something or other — being 
asleep — some fellows, somehow, whether previously concealed in 
the house or not remains to be seen, got to young Tom's safe, 
forced it, and abstracted the contents. Being then disturbed, 
they made off; letting themselves out at the main door, and 
double-locking it again (it was double-locked, and the key under 
Mrs. Sparsit's pillow) with a false key, which was picked up in 
the street near the Bank, about twelve o'clock to-day. No alarm 
takes place, till this chap, Bitzer, turns out this morning, and begins 
to open and prepare the oflfices for business. Then, looking at 
Tom's safe, he sees the door ajar, and finds the lock forced, and the 
money gone." 

" Where is Tom, by-the-bye % " asked Harthouse, glancing 
round. 

"He has been helping the police," said Bounderby, "and stays 
behind at the Bank. I wish these fellows had tried to rob me 
when I was at his time of life. They would have been out of 
pocket if they had invested eighteen-pence in the job ; I can tell 
'em that." 

" Is anybody suspected ? " 

"Suspected? I should think there was somebody suspected. 
Egod ! " said Bounderby, relinquishing Mrs. Sparsit's arm to wipe 
his heated head. " Josiah Bounderby of Coketown is not to be 
plundered and nobody suspected. No, thank you ! " 

Might Mr. Harthouse inquire Who was suspected? 

"Well," said Bounderby, stopping and facing about to confront 
them all, " I'll tell you. It's not to be mentioned everywhere ; it's 
not to be mentioned anywhere : in order that the scoundrels con- 
cerned (there's a gang of 'em) may be thrown off their guard. So 
take this in confidence. Now wait a bit." Mr. Bounderby wiped 
his head again. " What should you say to ; " here he violently 
exploded : " to a Hand being in it % " 

"I hope," said Harthouse, lazily, "not our friend Blackpot?" 

" Say Pool instead of Pot, sir," returned Bounderby, " and that's 
the man." 



568 HARD TIMES. 

Louisa faintly uttered some word of incredulity and surprise. 

" yes ! I know ! " said Bounderby, immediately catching at 
the sound. " I know ! I am used to that. I know all about it. 
They are the finest people in the world, these fellows are. They 
have got the gift of the gab, they have. They only want to have 
their rights explained to them, they do. But I tell you what. 
Show me a dissatisfied Hand, and I'll show you a man that's fit for 
anything bad, I don't care what it is." 

Another of the popular fictions of Coketown, which some pains 
had been taken to disseminate — and which some people really 
beheved. 

" But I am acquainted with these chaps," said Bounderby. "I 
can read 'em ofi", hke books. Mrs. Sparsit, ma'am, I appeal to 
you. What warning did I give that fellow, the first time he set 
foot in the house, when the express object of his visit was to 
know how he could knock Religion over, and floor the EstabHshed 
Church ? Mrs. Sparsit, in point of high connections, you are on a 
level with the aristocracy, — did I say, or chd I not say, to that 
fellow, ' you can't hide the truth from me : you are not the kind of 
fellow I like ; you'll come to no good ' ? " 

"Assuredly, sir," returned Mrs. Sparsit, "you did, in a highly 
impressive manner, give him such an admonition." 

"When he shocked you, ma'am," said Bounderby; "when he 
shocked your feehngs ? " 

"Yes, sir," returned Mrs. Sparsit, with a meek shake of her 
head, "he certainly did so. Though I do not mean to say but 
that my feehngs may be weaker on such points — more foolish if 
the term is preferred — than they might have been, if I had always 
occupied my present position." 

Mr. Bounderby stared with a bursting pride at Mr. Harthouse, 
as much as to say, " I am the proprietor of this female, and she's 
worth your attention, I think." Then, resumed his discourse. 

"You can recall for yourself, Harthouse, what I said to him 
when you saw him. I didn't mince the matter with him. I am 
never mealy with 'em. I knoav 'em. Very well, sir. Three days 
after that, he bolted. Went off, nobody knows where : as my 
mother did in my infancy — only with this difference, that he is a 
worse subject than my mother, if possible. What did he do before 
he went ? What do you say ; " Mr. Bounderby, with his hat in 
his hand, gave a beat upon the crown at every little division of his 
sentences, as if it were a tambourine ; "to his being seen — night 
after night — watching the Bank ? — to his lurking about there — 
after dark? — To its striking Mrs. Sparsit — that he could be 
lurking for no good — To her calUng Bitzer"s attention to him, and 



HARD TIMES. 569 

their both taking notice of him — And to its appearing on inquiry 
to-day — that he was also noticed by the neighbours ? " Having 
come to the climax, Mr. Bounderby, like an oriental dancer, put 
his tambourine on his head. 

" Suspicious," said James Harthouse, " certainly." 

" I think so, sir," said Bounderb}^, with a defiant nod. " I 
think so. But there are more of 'em in it. There's an old woman. 
One never hears of these things till the mischiefs done; all sorts 
of defects are found out in the stable door after the horse is stolen ; 
there's an old woman turns up now. An old woman who seems to 
have been flying into town on a broomstick, every now and then. 
She watches the place a whole day before this fellow begins, and 
on the night when you saw him, she steals away with him, and 
holds a council with him — I suppose, to make her report on 
going off duty, and be damned to her." 

There was such a person in the room that night, and she shrunk 
from observation, thought Louisa. 

" This is not all of 'em, even as we already know 'em," said 
Bounderby, with many nods of hidden meaning. "But I have 
said enough for the present. You'll have the goodness to keep it 
quiet, and mention it to no one. It may take time, but we shall 
have 'em. It's policy to give 'em line enough, and there's no 
objection to that." 

" Of course, they will be punished with the utmost rigour of the 
law, as notice-boards observe," replied James Harthouse, "and 
serve them right. Fellows who go in for Banks must take the 
consequences. If there were no consequences, we should all go in 
for Banks." He had gently taken Louisa's parasol from her hand, 
and had put it up for her ; and she walked under its shade, though 
the sun did not shine there. 

"For the present. Loo Bounderby," said her husband, "here's 
Mrs. Sparsit to look after. Mrs. Sparsit's nerves have been acted 
upon by this business, and she'll stay here a day or two. So, make 
her comfortable." 

"Thank you very much, sir," that discreet lady observed, " but 
pray do not let My comfort be a consideration. Anything will do 
for Me." 

It soon appeared that if Mrs, Sparsit had a failing in her associa- 
tion with that domestic establishment, it was that she was so 
excessively regardless of herself and regardful of others, as to be a 
nuisance. On being shown her chamber, she was so dreadfully sen- 
sible of its comforts as to suggest the inference that she would have 
preferred to pass the night on the mangle in the laundiy. True, 
the Powlers and the Scadgerses were accustomed to splendour, "but 



570 HARD TIMES. 

it is my duty to remember," Mrs. Sparsit was fond of observing 
with a lofty grace : particularly when any of the domestics were 
present, "that what I was, I am no longer. Indeed," said she, 
" if I could altogether cancel the remembrance that Mr. Sparsit 
was a Powler, or that I myself am related to the Scadgers family ; 
or if I could even revoke the fact, and make myself a person of 
common descent and ordinary connections ; I would gladly do so. 
I should think it, under existing circumstances, right to do so." 
The same Hermitical state of mind led to her renunciation of made 
dishes and wines at dinner, until fairly commanded by Mr. Boun- 
derby to take them; when she said, "Indeed you are very good, 
sir;" and departed from a resolution of which she had made rather 
formal and public announcement, to "wait for the simple mutton." 
She was likewise deeply apologetic for wanting the salt ; and, feel- 
ing amiably bound to bear out Mr. Bounderby to the fullest extent 
in the testimony he had borne to her nerves, occasionally sat back in her 
chair and silently wept ; at which periods a tear of large dimensions, 
like a crystal ear-ring, might be observed (or rather, must be, for 
it insisted on public notice) sliding down her Roman nose. 

But Mrs. Sparsit's greatest point, j&rst and last, was her deter- 
mination to pity Mr. Bounderby. There were occasions when in 
looking at him she was involuntarily moved to shake her head, as 
who would say, " Alas poor Yorick ! " After allowing herself to 
be betrayed into these evidences of emotion, she would force a lam- 
bent brightness, and would be fitfully cheerful, and would say, "You 
have still good spirits, sir, I am thankful to find ; " and would 
appear to had it as a blessed dispensation that Mr. Bounderby bore 
up as he did. One idiosyncrasy for which she often apologised, she 
found it excessively difficult to conquer. She had a curious propen- 
sity to caU Mrs. Bounderby " Miss Gradgrind," and yielded to it 
some three or four score times in the course of the evening. Her 
repetition of this mistake covered Mrs. Sparsit with modest confu- 
sion; but indeed, she said, it seemed so natural to say Miss Grad- 
grind : whereas, to persuade herself that the young lady whom she 
had had the happiness of knowing from a child could be really and 
truly Mrs. Bounderby, she found almost impossible. It was a fur- 
ther singularity of this remarkable case, that the more she thought 
about it, the more impossible it appeared; ^' the differences," she 
observed, "being such." 

In the drawing-room after dinner, Mr. Bounderby tried the case 
of the robbery, examined the witnesses, made notes of the evidence, 
found the suspected persons guilty, and sentenced them to the extreme 
punishment of the law. That done, Bitzer was dismissed to town 
with instructions to recommend Tom to come home by the mail-train. 



HARD TIMES. 571 

When candles were brought, Mrs. Sparsit murmured, " Don't be 
low, sir. Pray let me see you cheerful, sir, as I used to do." Mr. 
Bounderby, upon whom these consolations had begun to produce the 
effect of making him, in a bull-headed blundering way, sentimental, 
sighed like some large sea-animal. " I cannot bear to see you so, 
sir," said Mrs. Sparsit. "Try a hand at backgammon, sir, as you 
used to do when I had the honour of living under your roof." " I 
haven't played backgammon, ma'am," said Mr. Bounderby, "since 
that time." "jS'o, sir," said Mrs. Sparsit, soothingly, " I am 
aware that you have not. I remember that Miss Gradgrind takes 
no interest in the game. But I shall be happy, sir, if you 
will condescend." 

They played near a window, opening on the garden. It was a 
fine night : not moonlight, but sultry and fragrant. Louisa and Mr. 
Harthouse strolled out into the garden, where their voices could be 
heard in the stillness, though not what they said. Mrs. Sparsit, 
from her place at the backgammon board, was constantly straining 
her eyes to pierce the shadows without. "What's the matter, 
ma'am?" said Mr. Bounderby; "you don't see a Fire, do you?" 
" Oh dear no, sir," returned Mrs. Sparsit, " I was thinking of the 
dew." "What have you got to do with the dew, ma'am?" said 
Mr. Bounderby. "It's not myself, sir," returned Mrs. Sparsit, "I 
am fearful of Miss Gradgriud's taking cold." " She never takes 
cold," said Mr. Bounderby. "Really, sir?" said Mrs. Sparsit. 
And was affected with a cough in her throat. 

When the time drew near for retiring, Mr. Bounderby took a 
glass of water. " Oh, sir ? " said Mrs. Sparsit. " Not your sherry 
warm, with lemon-peel and nutmeg?" "Why I have got out of 
the habit of taking it now, ma'am," said Mr. Bounderby. " The 
more's the pity, sir," returned Mrs. Sparsit; "you are losing all 
your good old habits. Cheer up, sir ! If Miss Gradgrind will 
permit me, I will offer to make it for you, as I have often done." 

Miss Gradgrind readily permitting Mrs. Sparsit to do anything 
she pleased, that considerate lady made the beverage, and handed 
it to Mr. Bounderby. " It will do you good, sir. It will warm 
your heart. It is the sort of thing you want, and ought to take, 
sir." And when Mr. Bounderby said, "Your health, ma'am!" 
she answered with great feeling. " Thank you, sir. The same to 
you, and happiness also." Finally, she wished him good night, 
with great pathos ; and Mr. Bounderby went to bed, with a maudlin 
persuasion that he had been crossed in something tender, though 
he could not, for his life, have mentioned what it was. 

Long after Louisa had undressed and lain down, she watched and 
waited for her brother's coming home. That coidd hardly be, she 



572 HARD TIMES. 

knew, until an hour past midnight; but in the country silence, 
which did anything but calm the trouble of her thoughts, time 
lagged wearily. At last, when the darkness and stillness had 
seemed for hours to thicken one another, she heard the bell at the 
gate. She felt as though she would have been glad that it rang 
on until daylight ; but it ceased, and the circles of its last sound 
spread out fainter and wider in the air, and all was dead again. 

She waited yet some quarter of an hour, as she judged. Then 
she arose, put on a loose robe, and went out of her room in the 
dark, and up the stakcase to her brother's room. His door being 
shut, she softly opened it and spoke to him, approaching his bed 
with a noiseless step. 

She kneeled down beside it, passed her arm over his neck, and 
drew his face to hers. She knew that he only feigned to be asleep, 
but she said nothing to him. 

He started by-and-bye as if he were just then awakened, and 
asked who that was, and what was the matter ? 

" Tom, have you anything to tell me 1 If ever you loved me in 
your life, and have anything concealed from every one besides, tell 
it to me." 

"I don't know what you mean. Loo. You have been dreaming." 

"My dear brother : " she laid her head down on his pillow, and 
her hair flowed over him as if she would hide him from every one 
but herself : " is there nothing that you have to tell me ? Is there 
nothing you can tell me if you will 1 You can tell me nothing that 
will change me. Tom, tell me the truth ! " 

" I don't know what you mean. Loo ! " 

" As you lie here alone, my dear, in the melancholy night, so you 
must lie somewhere one night, when even I, if I am hving then, 
shall have left you. As I am here beside you, barefoot, unclothed, 
undistinguishable in darkness, so must I lie through aU the night 
of my decay, until I am dust. In the name of that time, Tom, 
tell me the truth now ! " 

" "What is it you want to know ? " 

" You may be certain ; " in the energy of her love she took him 
to her bosom as if he were a child ; " that I will not reproach you. 
You may be certain that I will be compassionate and true to you. 
You may be certain that I will save you at whatever cost. 
Tom, have you nothing to tell me 1 Whisper very softly. Say 
only 'yes,' and I shall understand you ! " 

She turned her ear to his lips, but he remained doggedly silent. 

"Not a word, Tom?" 

" How can I say Yes, or how can I say No, when I don't know 
what you mean 1 Loo, you are a brave, kind girl, worthy I begin 



HARD TIMES. 573 

to think of a better brother than I am. But I have nothing more 
to say. Go to bed, go to bed." 

"You are tired," she whispered presently, more in her usual 
way. 

"Yes, I am quite tired out." 

"You have been so hurried and disturbed to-day. Have any 
fresh discoveries been made ? " 

" Only those you have heard of, from — him." 

" Tom, have you said to any one that we made a visit to those 
people, and that we saw those three together ? " 

" No. Didn't you yourself particularly ask me to keep it quiet 
when you asked me to go there with you ? " 

"Yes. But I did not know then what was going to happen." 

" Nor I neither. How could 1 1 " 

He was very quick upon her with this retort. 

" Ought I to say, after what has happened," said his sister, 
standing by the bed — she had gradually withdrawn herself and 
risen, "that I made that visit? Should I say so? Must I 
say so ? " 

"Good Heavens, Loo," returned her brother, "you are not in 
the habit of asking my advice. Say what you like. If you keep 
it to yourself, I shall keep it to myself. If you disclose it, there's 
an end of it." 

It was too dark for either to see the other's face; but each 
seemed very attentive, and to consider before speaking. 

" Tom, do you believe the man I gave the money to, is really 
implicated in this crime ? " 

" I don't know. I don't see why he shouldn't be." 

" He seemed to me an honest man." 

" Another person may seem to you dishonest, and yet not be so." 

There was a pause, for he had hesitated and stopped. 

"In short," resumed Tom, as if he had made up his mind, "if 
you come to that, perhaps I was so far from being altogether in 
his favour, that I took him outside the door to tell him quietly, 
that I thought he might consider himself very well off to get such 
a windfall as he had got from my sister, and that I hoped he would 
make good use of it. You remember whether I took him out or 
not. I say nothing against the man; he may be a very good 
fellow, for anything I know ; I hope he is." 

" Was he offended by what you said ? " 

" No, he took it pretty well ; he was civil enough. Where are 
you. Loo?" He sat up in bed and kissed her. "Good night, 
my dear, good night ! " 

" You have nothing mor^ to tell me ? " 



674 HARD TIMES. 

" No. What should I have ? You wouldn't have me tell you 
a He ! " 

" I wouldn't have you do that to-night, Tom, of all the nights 
in your life ; many and much happier as I hope they will be." 

" Thank you, my dear Loo. I am so tired, that I am sure I 
wonder I don't say anything to get to sleep. Go to bed, go to 
bed." 

Kissing her again, he turned round, drew the coverlet over his 
head, and lay as still as if that time had come by which she had 
adjured him. She stood for some time at the bedside before she 
slowly moved away. She stopped at the door, looked back when 
she had opened it, and asked him if he had called her ? But he 
lay still, and she softly closed the door and returned to her room. 

Then the wretched boy looked cautiously up and found her gone, 
crept out of bed, fastened his door, and threw himself upon his 
pillow again : tearing his hair, morosely crying, grudgingly loving 
her, hatefully but impenitently spurning himself, and no less hate- 
fully and unprofitably spurning all the good in the world. 



CHAPTER IX. 

HEARING THE LAST OF IT. 

Mrs. Sparsit, lying by to recover the tone of her nerves in 
Mr. Bounderby's retreat, kept such a sharp look-out, night and 
day, under her Coriolanian eyebrows, that her eyes, like a couple 
of lighthouses on an iron-bound coast, might have warned all pru- 
dent mariners from that bold rock her Roman nose and the dark 
and craggy region in its neighbourhood, but for the placidity of her 
manner. Although it was hard to believe that her retiring for the 
night could be anything but a form, so severely wide awake were 
those classical eyes of hers, and so impossible did it seem that 
her rigid nose could yield to any relaxing influence, yet her man- 
ner of sitting, smoothing her uncomfortable, not to say, gritty 
mittens (they were constructed of a cool fabric like a meat-safe), 
or of ambling to unknown places of destination with her foot in 
her cotton stirrup, was so perfectly serene, that most observers 
would have been constrained to suppose her a dove, embodied by 
some freak of nature, in the earthly tabernacle of a bird of the 
hooked-beaked order. 

She was a most wonderful woman for prowling about the house. 
How she got from story to story was a mystery beyond solution. 
A lady so decorous in herself, and so highly connected, was not to 



HARD TIMES. 575 

be suspected of dropping over the banisters or sliding down them, 
yet her extraordinaiy facihty of locomotion suggested the wild 
idea. Another noticeable circumstance in Mrs. Sparsit was that 
she was never hurried. She would shoot with consummate velocity 
from the roof to the hall, yet would be in full possession of her 
breath and dignity on the moment of her arrival there. ^N'either 
was she ever seen by human vision to go at a great pace. 

She took Yery kindly to Mr. Harthouse, and had some pleasant 
conversation with him soon after her arrival. She made him her 
stately curtsey in the garden, one morning before breakfast. 

"It appears but yesterday, sir," said Mrs. Sparsit, "that I had 
the honour of recei\ing you at the Bank, when you were so good 
as to wish to be made acquainted with Mr. Bounderby's address." 

" An occasion, I am sure, not to be forgotten by myself in the 
course of Ages," said Mr. Harthouse, inclining his head to Mrs. 
Sparsit Avith the most indolent of all possible airs. 

"We live in a singular world, sir," said Mrs. Sparsit. 

"I have had the honour, by a coincidence of which I am proud, 
to have made a remark, similar in effect, though not so epigram- 
matically expressed." 

"A sing-ular world, I would say, sir," pursued Mrs. Sparsit; 
after acknowledging the compliment with a drooping of her dark 
eyebrows, not altogether so mild in its expression as her voice was 
in its dulcet tones; "as regards the intimacies we form at one 
time, with individuals we were quite ignorant of, at another. I 
recall, sir, that on that occasion you went so far as to say you were 
actually apprehensive of Miss Gradgrind." 

"Your memory does me more honour than my insignificance 
deserves. I availed myself of your obhging hints to correct my 
timidity, and it is unnecessary to add that they were perfectly 
accurate. Mrs. Sparsit's talent for — in fact for anything requir- 
ing accuracy — • with a combination of strength of mind — and Fam- 
ily — is too habitually developed to admit of any question." He 
was almost falling asleep over this compliment : it took him so 
long to get through, and his mind wandered so much in the course 
of its execution. 

"You found Miss Gradgrind — I really cannot call her Mrs. 
Bounderby ; it's very absurd of me — as youthful as I described 
her ? " asked Mrs. Sparsit, sweetly. 

"You drew her portrait perfectly," said Mr. Harthouse. "Pre- 
sented her dead image." 

"Very engaging, sir," said Mrs. Sparsit, causing her mittens 
slowly to revolve over one another. 

" Highly so." 



576 HARD TIMES. 

"It used to be considered," said Mrs. Sparsit, "that Miss Grad- 
grind was wanting in animation, but I confess she appears to me 
considerably and strikingly improved in that respect. Ay, and 
indeed here is Mr. Bounderby ! " cried Mrs. Sparsit, nodding her 
head a great many times, as if she had been talking and thinking 
of no one else. "How do you find yourself this morning, sir? 
Pray let us see you cheerful, sir." 

Now, these persistent assuagements of his misery, and lighten- 
ings of his load, had by this time begun to have the effect of mak- 
ing Mr. Bounderby softer than usual towards Mrs. Sparsit, and 
harder than usual to most other people from his wife downward. 
So, when Mrs. Sparsit said with forced lightness of heart, "You want 
your breakfast, sir, but I dare say Miss Gradgrind will soon be here 
to preside at the table," Mr. Bounderby replied, " If I waited to 
be taken care of by my wife, ma'am, I believe you know pretty 
well I should wait till Doomsday, so I'll trouble t/ou to take charge 
of the teapot." Mrs. Sparsit complied, and assumed her old posi- 
tion at table. 

This again made the excellent woman vastly sentimental. She 
was so humble withal, that when Louisa appeared, she rose, pro- 
testing she never could think of sitting in that place under exist- 
ing circumstances, often as she had had the honour of making Mr. 
Bounderby's breakfast, before Mrs. Gradgrind — she begged par- 
don, she meant to say Miss Bounderby — she hoped to be excused, 
but she really could not get it right yet, though she trusted to 
become familiar with it by-and-bye — had assumed her present posi- 
tion. It was only (she observed) because Miss Gradgrind happened 
to be a little late, and Mr. Bounderby's time was so very precious, 
and she knew it of old to be so essential that he should breakfast 
to the moment, that she had taken the liberty of complying with 
his request ; long as his will had been a law to her. 

"There! Stop where you are, ma'am," said Mr. Bounderby, 
" stop where you are ! Mrs. Bounderby will be very glad to be 
relieved of the trouble, I believe." 

"Don't say that, sir," returned Mrs. Sparsit, almost with sever- 
ity, " because that is very unkind to Mrs. Bounderby. And to be 
unkind is not to be you, sir." 

" You may set your mmd at rest, ma'am. — You can take it very 
quietly, can't you. Loo ? " said Mr. Bounderby, in a blustering way 
to his wife. 

" Of course. It is of no moment. Why should it be of any 
importance to me ? " 

" Why should it be of any importance to any one, Mrs. Sparsit, 
ma'am?" said Mr. Bounderby, swelling with a sense of slight. 



HARD TIMES. 577 

"You attach too much importance to these things, ma'am. By 
George, you'll be corrupted in some of your notions here. You are 
old-fashioned, ma'am. You are behind Tom Gradgrind's children's 
time." 

" What is the matter with you ? " asked Louisa, coldly surprised. 
" What has given you offence 1 " 

'^' Offence ! " repeated Bounderby. " Do you suppose if there 
was any offence given me, I shouldn't name it, and request to have 
it corrected ? I am a straightforward man, I believe. I don't go 
beating about for side-winds." 

" I suppose no one ever had occasion to think you too diffident, 
or too delicate," Louisa answered him composedly : "I have never 
made that objection to you, either as a child or as a woman. I 
don't understand what you would have." 

"Have?" returned Mr. Bounderby. "Nothing. Otherwise, 
don't you. Loo Bounderby, know thoroughly well that I, Josiah 
Bounderby of Coketown, would have it ? " 

She looked at him, as he struck the table and made the teacups 
ring, with a proud colour in her face that was a new change, Mr. 
Harthouse thought. "You are incomprehensible this morning," 
said Louisa. " Pray take no further trouble to explain yourself. 
I am not curious to know your meaning. What does it matter ? " 

Nothing more was said on this theme, and Mr. Harthouse was 
soon idly gay on indifferent subjects. But from this day, the Spar- 
sit action upon Mr. Bounderby threw Louisa and James Harthouse 
more together, and strengthened the dangerous alienation from her 
husband and confidence against him with another, into which she 
had fallen by degrees so fine that she could not retrace them if she 
tried. But whether she ever tried or no, lay hidden in her own 
closed heart. 

Mrs. Sparsit was so much affected on this particular occasion, 
that, assisting Mr. Bounderby to his hat after breakfast, and being 
then alone with him in the hall, she imprinted a chaste kiss upon his 
hand, murmured " My benefactor ! " and retired, overwhelmed "v\ath 
grief. Yet it is an indubitable fact, within the cognizance of this 
history, that five minutes after he had left the house in the self- 
same hat, the same descendant of the Scadgerses and connection 
by matrimony of the Powlers, shook her right-hand mitten at 
his portrait, made a contemptuous grimace at that work of art, 
and said " Serve you right, you Noodle, and I am glad of it." 

Mr. Bounderby had not been long gone, when Bitzer appeared. 
Bitzer had come down by train, shrieking and rattling over the 
long line of arches that bestrode the wild country of past and 
present coalpits, with an express from Stone Lodge. It was a 



578 HARD TIMES. 

hasty note to inform Louisa, that Mrs. Gradgrind lay very ill. She 
had never been well within her daughter's knowledge ; but, she 
had declined within the last few days, had continued sinking all 
through the night, and was now as nearly dead, as her limited 
capacity of being in any state that implied the ghost of an inten- 
tion to get out of it allowed. 

Accompanied by the lightest of porters, fit colourless servitor at 
Death's door when Mrs. Gradgrind knocked, Louisa rumbled to 
Coketown, over the coalpits past and present, and was whirled into 
its smoky jaws. She dismissed the messenger to his own devices, 
and rode away to her old home. 

She had seldom been there since her marriage. Her father was 
usually sifting and sifting at his parliamentary cinder-heap in Lon- 
don (without being observed to turn up many precious articles 
among the rubbish), and was still hard at it in the national dust- 
yard. Her mother had taken it rather as a disturbance than 
otherwise, to be visited, as she recHned upon her sofa; young 
people, Louisa felt herself all unfit for ; Sissy she had never soft- 
ened to again, since the night when the stroller's child had raised 
her eyes to look at Mr. Bounderby's intended wife. She had no 
inducements to go back, and had rarely gone. 

Neither, as she approached her old home now, did any of the 
best influences of old home descend upon her. The dreams of 
childhood — its airy fables ; its graceful, beautiful, humane, impos- 
sible adornments of the world beyond : so good to be believed in 
once, so good to be remembered when outgrown, for then the least 
among them rises to the stature of a great Charity in the heart, 
suffering little children to come into the midst of it, and to keep 
with their pure hands a garden in the stony ways of this world, 
wherein it were better for all the children of Adam that they should 
oftener sun themselves, simple and trustful, and not worldly-wise 
— what had she to do with these 1 Remembrances of how she 
had journeyed to the little that she knew, by the enchanted roads 
of what she and millions of innocent creatures had hoped and 
imagined ; of how, first coming upon Reason through the tender 
light of Fancy, she had seen it a beneficent god, deferring to gods 
as great as itself : not a grim Idol, cruel and cold, with its victims 
bound hand to foot, and its big dumb shape set up with a sightless 
stare, never to be moved by anything but so many calculated tons 
of leverage — what had she to do with these 1 Her remembrances 
of home and childhood were remembrances of the drying up of 
every spring and fountain in her young heart as it gushed out. 
The golden waters were not there. They were flowing for the 
fertilisation of the land where grapes are gathered from thorns, and 
figs from thistles. 



HARD TIMES. 579 

She went, with a heavy, hardened kind of sorrow upon her, into 
the house and into her mother's room. Since the time of her 
leaving home. Sissy had lived with the rest of the family on equal 
terms. Sissy was at her mother's side ; and Jane, her sister, now 
ten or twelve years old, was in the room. 

There was great trouble before it could be made known to Mrs. 
Gradgrind that her eldest child was there. She reclined, propped 
up, from mere habit, on a couch : as nearly in her old usual atti- 
tude, as anything so helpless could be kept in. She had positively 
refused to take to her bed; on the ground that if she did, she 
would never hear the last of it. 

Her feeble voice sounded so far away in her bundle of shawls, 
and the sound of another voice addressing her seemed to take such 
a long time in getting down to her ears, that she might have been 
lying at the bottom of a well. The poor lady was nearer Truth 
than she ever had been : which had much to do with it. 

On being told that Mrs. Bounderby was there, she replied, at 
cross-purposes, that she had never called him by that name since 
he married Louisa; that pending her choice of an objectionable 
name, she had called him J ; and that she could not at present 
depart from that regulation, not being yet provided with a perma- 
nent substitute. Louisa had sat by her for some minutes, and had 
spoken to her often, before she arrived at a clear understanding 
who it was. She then seemed to come to it all at once. 

" Well, my dear," said Mrs. Gradgrind, " and I hope you are 
going on satisfactorily to yourself It was all your father's doing. 
He set his heart upon it. And he ought to know." 

"I want to hear of you, mother; not of myself" 

" You want to hear of me, my dear ? That's something new, I 
am sure, when anybody wants to hear of me. Not at all well, 
Louisa. Very faint and giddy." 

" Are you in pain, dear mother ? " 

"I think there's a pain somewhere in the room," said Mrs. 
Gradgrind, "but I couldn't positively say that I have got it." 

After this strange speech, she lay silent for some time. Louisa, 
holding her hand, could feel no pulse ; but kissing it, could see 
a slight thin thread of life in fluttering motion. 

" You very seldom see your sister," said Mrs. Gradgrind. " She 
grows like you. I wish you would look at her. Sissy, bring her 
here." 

She was brought, and stood with her hand in her sister's. 
Louisa had observed her with her arm round Sissy's neck, and she 
felt the difference of this approach. 

" Do you see the likeness, Louisa ? " 



580 HARD TIMES. 

"Yes, mother. I should think her like me. But " 

" Eh ! Yes, I always say so," Mrs. Gradgrind cried, with unex- 
pected quickness. " And that reminds me. I — I want to speak 
to you, my dear. Sissy, my good girl, leave us alone a minute." 

Louisa had relinquished the hand : had thought that her sister's 
was a better and brighter face than hers had ever been : had seen 
in it, not without a rising feeling of resentment, even in that place 
and at that time, something of the gentleness of the other face in 
the room ; the sweet face with the trusting eyes, made paler than 
^vatching and sympathy made it, by the rich dark hair. 

Left alone with her mother, Louisa saw her lying with an awful 
lull upon her face, like one who was floating away upon some great 
water, all resistance over, content to be carried down the stream. 
She put the shadow of a hand to her lips again, and recalled her. 

"You were going to speak to me, mother." 

" Eh ? Yes, to be sure, my dear. You know your father is 
almost always away now, and therefore I must write to him 
, about it." 

" About what, mother 1 Don't be troubled. About what ? " 

" You must remember, my dear, that whenever I have said any- 
thing, on any subject, I have never heard the last of it : and conse- 
quently, that I have long left off saying anything." 

" I can hear you, mother." But, it was only by dint of bending 
down to her ear, and at the same time attentively watching the lips 
as they moved, that she could link such faint and broken sounds 
into any chain of connection, 

"You learnt a great deal, Louisa, and so did your brother. 
Ologies of all kinds from morning to night. If there is any Ology 
left, of any description, that has not been worn to rags in this 
house, all I can say is, I hope I shall never hear its name." 

" I can hear you, mother, when you have strength to go on." 
This, to keep her from floating away. 

" But there is something — not an Ology at all — that your 
father has missed, or forgotten, Louisa. I don't know what it is. 
I have often sat with Sissy near me, and thought about it. I shall 
never get its name now. But your father may. It makes me 
restless. I want to write to him, to find out for God's sake, what 
it is. Give me a pen, give me a pen." 

Even the power of restlessness was gone, except from the poor 
head, which could just turn from side to side. 

She fancied, however, that her request had been complied with, 
and that the pen she could not have held was in her hand. It 
matters little what figures of wonderful no-meaning she began to 
trace upon her wrappers. The hand soon stopped in the midst of 



HARD TIMES. 581 

them ; the light that had always been feeble and dim behind the 
weak transparency, went out ; and even Mrs. Gradgrind, emerged 
from the shadow in which man walketh and disquieteth himself in 
vain, took upon her the dread solemnity of the sages and patriarchs. 



CHAPTER X. 

MRS. SPARSIT's staircase. 

Mrs. Sparsit's nerves being slow to recover their tone, the 
worthy woman made a stay of some weeks in duration at Mr. 
Bounclerby's retreat, where, notwithstanding her anchorite turn of 
mind based upon her becoming consciousness of her altered station, 
she resigned herself with noble fortitude to lodging, as one may say, 
in clover, and feeding on the fat of the land. During the whole 
term of this recess from the guardianship of the Bank, Mrs. Sparsit 
was a pattern of consistency ; continuing to take such pity on Mr. 
Bounderby to his face, as is rarely taken on man, and to call his 
portrait a Noodle to its face, with the greatest acrimony and 
contempt. 

Mr. Bounderby, having got it into his explosive composition that 
Mrs. Sparsit was a highly superior woman to perceive that he had 
that general cross upon him in his deserts (for he had not yet set- 
tled what it was), and further that Louisa would have objected to 
her as a frequent visitor if it had comported with his greatness that 
she should object to anything he chose to do, resolved not to lose 
sight of Mrs. Sparsit easily. So when her nerves were strung up 
to the pitch of again consuming sweetbreads in solitude, he said to 
her at the dinner-table, on the day before her departure, "I tell 
you what, ma'am ; you shall come down here of a Saturday, while 
the fine weather lasts, and stay till Monday." To which Mrs. 
Sparsit returned, in eft'ect, though not of the Mahomedan persua- 
sion : "To hear is to obey." 

Now, Mrs. Sparsit was not a poetical woman ; but she took an 
idea in the nature of an allegorical fancy, into her head. Much 
watching of Louisa, and much consequent observation of her im- 
penetrable demeanour, which keenly whetted and sharpened Mrs. 
Sparsit's edge, must have given her as it were a lift, in the way of 
inspiration. She erected in her mind a mighty Staircase, with a 
dark pit of shame and ruin at the bottom ; and down those stairs, 
from day to day and hour to hour, she saw Louisa coming. 

It became the business of Mrs. Sparsit's life, to look up at her 
staircase, and to watch Louisa coming down. Sometimes slowly. 



582 HARD TIMES. 

sometimes quickly, sometimes several steps at one bout, sometimes 
stopping, never turning back. If she had once turned back, it 
might have been the death of Mrs. Sparsit in spleen and grief. 

She had been descending steadily, to the day, and on the day, 
vrhen Mr. Bounderby issued the weekly invitation recorded above. 
Mrs. Sparsit was in good spirits, and inclined to be conversational. 

"And pray, sir," said she, "if I may venture to ask a question 
appertaining to any subject on which you show reserve — which is 
indeed hardy in me, for I well know you have a reason for every- 
thing you do — have you received intelligence respecting the 
robbery?" 

" Why, ma'am, no ; not yet. Under the circumstances, I didn't 
expect it yet. Rome wasn't built in a day, ma'am." 

"Very true, sir," said Mrs. Sparsit, shaking her head. 

" Kor yet in a week, ma'am." 

"No, indeed, sir," returned Mrs. Sparsit, with a gentle melan- 
choly upon her. 

"In a similar manner, ma'am," said Bounderby, "I can wait, 
you know. If Romulus and Remus could wait, Josiah Bounderby 
can wait. They were better off in their youth than I was, how- 
ever. They had a she- wolf for a nurse ; / had only a she-wolf for 
a grandmother. She didn't give any milk, ma'am; she gaye 
bruises. She was a regular Alderney at that." 

" Ah ! " Mrs. Sparsit sighed and shuddered. 

"No, ma'am," continued Bounderby, "I have not heard anything 
more about it. It's in hand, though ; and young Tom, who rather 
sticks to business at present — something new for him ; he hadn't 
the schooling / had — is helping. My injunction is, Keep it quiet, 
and let it seem to blow over. Do what you like under the rose, 
but don't give a sign of what you're about ; or half a hundred of 
'em will combine together and get this fellow who has bolted, out 
of reach for good. Keep it quiet, and the thieves will grow in 
confidence by little and little, and we shall have 'em." 

" Veiy sagacious indeed, sir," said Mrs. Sparsit. "Very inter- 
esting. The old woman you mentioned, sir " 

"The old woman I mentioned, ma'am," said Bounderby, cutting 
the matter short, as it was nothing to boast about, " is not laid 
hold of; but, she may take her oath she will be, if 'that is any 
satisfaction to her villanous old mind. In the meantime, ma'am, 
I am of opinion, if you ask me my opinion, that the less she is 
talked about, the better." 

That same evening, Mrs. Sparsit, in her chamber window, resting 
from her packing operations, looked towards her great staircase and 
saw Louisa gtill descending. 



HARD TIMES. 583 

She sat by Mr. Harthouse, in an alcove in the garden, talking 
very low, he stood leaning over her, as they whispered together, 
and his face almost touched her hair. " If not quite ! " said Mrs. 
Sparsit, straining her hawk's eyes to the utmost. Mrs. Sparsit 
was too distant to hear a word of their discourse, or even to know 
that they were speaking softly, otherwise than from the expression 
of their figures ; but what they said was this : 

"You recollect the man, Mr. Harthouse?" 

" Oh, perfectly ! " 

" His face, and his manner, and what he said ? " 

" Perfectly. And an infinitely dreary person he appeared to me 
to be. Lengthy and prosy in the extreme. It was knowing to 
hold forth, in the humble-virtue school of eloquence ; but, I assure 
you I thought at the time, ' My good fellow, you are overdoing 
this ! ' " 

" It has been very difficult to me to think ill of that man." 

"My dear Louisa — as Tom says." Which he never did say. 
" You know no good of the fellow ? " 

"No, certainly." 

" Nor of any other such person ? " 

" How can I," she returned, with more of her first manner on 
her than he had lately seen, "when I know nothing of them, men 
or women ? " 

" My dear Louisa, then consent to receive the submissive repre- 
sentation of your devoted friend, who knows something of several 
varieties of his excellent fellow-creatures — for excellent they are, I 
am quite ready to believe, in spite of such little foibles as always 
helping themselves to what they can get hold of This fellow 
talks. Well ; every fellow talks. He professes morality. Well ; 
all sorts of humbugs profess morality. From the House of Com- 
mons to the House of Correction, there is a general profession of 
morality, except among our people; it really is that exception 
which makes our people quite reviving. You saw and heard the 
case. Here was one of the fluffy classes pulled up extremely short 
by my esteemed friend Mr. Bounderby — • who, as we know, is not 
possessed of that delicacy which would soften so tight a hand. 
The member of the fluffy classes was injured, exasperated, left the 
house grumbling, met somebody who proposed to him to go in for 
some share in this Bank business, went in, put something in his 
pocket which had nothing in it before, and relieved his mind ex- 
tremely. Really he would have been an uncommon, instead of a 
common, fellow, if he had not availed himself of such an oppor- 
tunity. Or he may have originated it altogether, if he had the 
cleverness." 



584 HARD TIMES. 

" I almost feel as though it must be bad in me," returned Louisa, 
after sitting thoughtful awhile, "to be so ready to agree with you, 
and to be so lightened in my heart by what you say." 

"I only say what is reasonable; nothing worse. I have talked 
it over with my friend Tom more than once — of course I remain 
on terms of perfect confidence with Tom — and he is quite of my 
opinion, and I am quite of his. Will you walk ? " 

They strolled away, among the lanes beginning to be indistinct 
in the twilight — she leaning on his arm — and she little thought 
how she was going down, down, do^vn, Mrs. Sparsit's staircase. 

Night and day, Mrs. Sparsit kept it standing. When Louisa 
had arrived at the bottom and disappeared in the gulf, it might 
fall in upon her if it would ; but, until then, there it was to be, a 
Building, before Mrs. Sparsit's eyes. And there Louisa always was, 
upon it. And always gliding do\STi, down, down ! 

Mrs. Sparsit saw James Harthouse come and go ; she heard of 
him here and there ; she saw the changes of the face he had studied ; 
she, too, remarked to a nicety how and when it clouded, how and 
when it cleared ; she kept her black eyes wide open, with no touch 
of pity, with no touch of compunction, all absorbed in interest. 
In the interest of seeing her, ever drawing, with no hand to stay 
her, nearer and nearer to the bottom of this new Giant's Staircase. 

With all her deference for Mr. Bounderby as contradistinguished 
from his portrait, Mrs. Sparsit had not the smallest intention of 
interrupting the descent. Eager to see it accomplished, and yet 
patient, she waited for the last fall, as for the ripeness and fulness 
of the harvest of her hopes. Hushed in expectancy, she kept her 
wary gaze upon the stairs ; and seldom so much as darkly shook 
her right mitten (with her fist in it), at the figure coming down. 



CHAPTER XL 

LOWER AND LOAVER. 

The figure descended the great stairs, steadily, steadily ; always 
verging, like a weight in deep water, to the black gulf at the 
bottom. 

Mr. Gradgrind, apprised of his wife's decease, made an expedition 
from London, and buried her in a business-like manner. He then 
returned with promptitude to the national cinder-heap, and resumed 
his sifting for the odds and ends he wanted, and his throwing of 
the dust about into the eyes of other people who wanted other odds 
and ends — in fact resumed his parhamentary duties. 



HARD TIMES. 585 

In the meantime, Mrs. Sparsit kept unwinking watch and ward. 
Separated from her staircase, all the week, by the length of iron 
road dividing Coketown from the country-house, she yet maintained 
her cat-like observation of Louisa, through her husband, through 
her brother, through James Harthouse, through the outsides of 
letters and packets, through everything animate and inanimate 
that at any time went near the stairs. " Your foot on the last 
step, my lady," said Mrs. Sparsit, apostrophising the descenchng 
figTire, with the aid of her threatening mitten, " and all your art 
shall never blind me." 

Art or nature though, the original stock of Louisa's character or 
the graft of circumstances upon it, — her curious reserve did baffle, 
while it stimulated, one as sagacious as Mrs. Sparsit. There were 
times when Mr. James Harthouse was not sure of her. There 
were times when he could not read the face he had studied so long ; 
and when this lonely girl was a greater mystery to him, than any 
woman of the world with a ring of satellites to help her. 

So the time went on ; until it happened that Mr. Bounderby 
was called away from home by business which required his presence 
elsewhere, for three or four days. It was on a Friday that he 
intimated this to Mrs. Sparsit at the Bank, adding : " But you'll 
go down to-morrow, ma'am, all the same. You'll go down just as 
if I was there. It will make no difference to you." 

" Pray, sir," returned Mrs. Sparsit, reproachfully, " let me beg 
you not to say that. Your absence will make a vast difference to 
me, sir, as I think you very well know." 

" Well, ma'am, then you must get on in my absence as well as 
you can," said Bounderby, not displeased. 

"Mr. Bounderby," retorted Mrs. Sparsit, "your will is to 
me a law, sir; otherwise, it might be my inclination to dispute 
your kind commands, not feeling sure that it will be quite so 
agreeable to Miss Gradgrind to receive me, as it ever is to your 
own munificent hospitality. But you shall say no more, sir. I 
will go, upon your invitation." 

" Why, when I invite you to my house, ma'am," said Bounderby, 
opening his eyes, " I should hope you want no other invitation." 

"No, indeed, sir," returned Mrs. Sparsit, "I should hope not. 
Say no more, sir. I would, sir, I could see you gay again." 

" What do you mean, ma'am 1 " blustered Bounderby. 

"Sir," rejoined Mrs. Sparsit, "there was wont to be an elasticity 
in you which I sadly miss. Be buoyant, sir ! " 

Mr. Bounderby, under the influence of this difficult adjuration, 
backed up by her compassionate eye, could only scratch his head 
in a feeble and ridiculous manner, and afterwards assert himself at 



586 HARD TIMES. 

a distance, by being heard to bully the small fry of business all 
the morning, 

"Bitzer," said Mrs. Sparsit that afternoon, when her patron was 
gone on his journey, and the Bank was closing, " present my com- 
pliments to young Mr. Thomas, and ask him if he would step up 
and partake of a lamb chop and walnut ketchup, with a glass of 
India ale ? " Young Mr. Thomas being usually ready for anything 
in that way, returned a gracious answer, and followed on its heels. 
" Mr. Thomas," said Mrs. Sparsit, " these plain viands being on 
table, I thought you might be tempted." 

" Thank'ee, Mrs. Sparsit," said the whelp. And gloomily fell to. 

" How is Mr. Harthouse, Mr. Tom 1 " asked Mrs. Sparsit. 

" Oh, he's aU right," said Tom. 

"Where may he be at present?" Mrs. Sparsit asked in a light 
conversational manner, after mentally devoting the whelp to the 
Furies for being so uncommunicative. 

"He is shooting in Yorkshire," said Tom. "Sent Loo a basket 
half as big as a church, yesterday." 

" The kind of gentleman, now," said Mrs. Sparsit, sweetly, 
" whom one might wager to be a good shot ! " 

" Crack," said Tom. 

He had long been a down-looking young fellow, but this charac- 
teristic had so increased of late, that he never raised his eyes to 
any face for three seconds together. Mrs. Sparsit consequently had 
ample means of watching his looks, if she were so inclined. 

"Mr. Harthouse is a great favourite of mine," said Mrs, Sparsit, 
" as indeed he is of most people. May we expect to see him again 
shortly, Mr, Tom ? " 

"Why, / expect to see him to-morrow," returned the whelp. 

" Good news ! " cried Mrs, Sparsit, blandly, 

" I have got an appointment with him to meet him in the even- 
ing at the station here," said Tom, "and I am going to dine with 
him afterwards, I believe. He is not coming down to the country 
house for a week or so, being due somewhere else. At least, he says 
so ; but I shouldn't wonder if he was to stop here over Sunday, and 
stray that way." 

" Which reminds me ! " said Mrs. Sparsit. " Would you re- 
member a message to your sister, Mr. Tom, if I was to charge you 
with one ? " 

"Well? rU try," returned the reluctant whelp, "if it isn't a 
long un." 

"It is merely my resjDectful compliments," said Mrs. Sparsit, 
"and I fear I may not trouble her with my society this week; 
being still a little nervous, and better perhaps by my poor self," 



HAKD TIMES. 587 

"Oh ! If that's all," observed Tom, "it wouldn't much matter, 
even if I was to forget it, for Loo's not likely to think of you 
unless she sees you." 

Having paid for his entertainment with this agreeable compli- 
ment, he relapsed into a hangdog silence until there was no more 
India ale left, when he said, " Well, Mrs. Sparsit, I must be off ! " 
and went off. 

Next day, Saturday, Mrs. Sparsit sat at her window all day long 
looking at the customers coming in and out, watching the postmen, 
keeping an eye on the general trafl&c of the street, revolving many 
things in her mind, but, above all, keeping her attention on her 
staircase. The evening come, she put on her bonnet and shawl, 
and went quietly out : having her reasons for hovering in a furtive 
way about the station by which a passenger would arrive from 
Yorkshire, and for preferring to peep into it round pillars and 
corners, and out of ladies' waiting-room windows, to appearing in 
its precincts openly. 

Tom was in attendance, and loitered about until the expected 
train came in. It brought no Mr. Harthouse. Tom waited until 
the crowd had dispersed, and the bustle was over ; and then referred 
to a posted list of trains, and took counsel with porters. That done, 
he strolled away idly, stopping in the street and looking up it and 
down it, and lifting his hat off and putting it on again, and yawning 
and stretching himself, and exhibiting all the symptoms of mortal 
weariness to be expected in one who had still to wait until the 
next train should come in, an hour and forty minutes hence. 

" This is a device to keep him out of the way," said Mrs. Sparsit, 
starting from the dull office window whence she had watched him 
last. " Harthouse is with his sister now ! " 

It was the conception of an inspired moment, and she shot off 
with her utmost swiftness to work it out. The station for the coun- 
try house was at the opposite end of the town, the time was short, 
the road not easy; but she was so quick in pouncing on a dis- 
engaged coach, so quick in darting out of it, producing her money, 
seizing her ticket, and diving into the train, that she was borne 
along the arches spanning the land of coalpits past and present, as 
if she had been caught up in a cloud and whirled away. 

All the journey, immovable in the air though never left behind ; 
plain to the dark eyes of her mind, as the electric wires which ruled 
a colossal strip of music-paper out of the evening sky, were plain to 
the dark eyes of her body; Mrs. Sparsit saw her staircase, with 
the figure coming down. Very near the bottom now. Upon the 
brink of the abyss. 

An overcast September evening, just at nightfall, saw beneath its 



588 HARD TIMES. 

drooping eyelid Mrs. Sparsit glide out of her carriage, pass down 
the wooden steps of the little station into a stony road, cross it into 
a green lane, and become hidden in a summer-growth of leaves and 
branches. One or two late birds sleepily chirping in their nests, 
and a bat heavily crossing and recrossing her, and the reek of her 
own tread in the thick dust that felt like velvet, were all Mrs. Spar- 
sit heard or saw until she very softly closed a gate. 

She went up to the house, keeping within the shrubbery, and 
went round it, peeping between the leaves at the lower windows. 
Most of them were open, as they usually were in such warm weather, 
but there were no lights yet, and all was silent. She tried the 
garden with no better effect. She thought of the wood, and stole 
towards it, heedless of long grass and briers : of worms, snails, and 
slugs, and all the creeping things that be. With her dark eyes and 
her hook nose warily in advance of her, Mrs. Sparsit softly crushed 
her way through the thick undergi'owth, so intent upon her object 
that she probably would have done no less, if the wood had been a 
wood of adders. 

Hark! 

The smaller birds might have tumbled out of their nests, fascinated 
by the glittering of Mrs. Sparsit's eyes in the gloom, as she stopped 
and listened. 

Low voices close at hand. His voice and hers. The appoint- 
ment tvas a device to keep the brother away ! There they were 
yonder, by the felled tree. 

Bending low among the dewy grass, Mrs. Sparsit advanced closer 
to them. She drew herself up, and stood behind a tree, like Robin- 
son Crusoe in his ambuscade against the savages ; so near to them 
that at a spring, and that no great one, she could have touched them 
both. He was there secretly, and had not shown himself at the 
house. He had come on horseback, and must have passed through 
the neighbouring fields ; for his horse was tied to the meadow side 
of the fence, within a few paces. 

"My dearest love," said he, "what could I do? Knowing you 
were alone, was it possible that I could stay away ? " 

" You may hang your head, to make yourself the more attractive ; 
/ don't know what they see in you when you hold it up," thought 
Mrs. Sparsit; "but you httle think, my dearest love, whose eyes 
are on you ! " 

That she hung her head, was certain. She urged him to go 
away, she commanded him to go away ; but she neither turned her 
face to him, nor raised it. Yet it was remarkable that she sat as 
still as ever the amiable woman in ambuscade had seen her sit, 
at any period in her life. Her hands rested in one another like the 



590 HARD TIMES. 

hands of a statue ; and even her manner of speaking was not hur- 
ried. 

" My dear child," said Harthouse ; Mrs. Sparsit saw with delight 
that his arm embraced her ; " will you not bear with my society 
for a little while ? " 

"Not here." 

"Where, Louisa?" 

" Not here." 

" But we have so little time to make so much of, and I have 
come so far, and am altogether so devoted, and distracted. There 
never was a slave at once so devoted and ill-used by his mistress. 
To look for your sunny welcome that has warmed me into life, and 
to be received in your frozen manner, is heart-rending." 

" Am I to say again, that I must be left to myself here ? " 

" But we must meet, my dear Louisa. Where shall we meet ? " 

They both started. The listener started, guiltily, too ; for she 
thought there was another listener among the trees. It was only 
rain, beginning to fall fast, in heavy drops. 

" Shall I ride up to the house a few minutes hence, innocently 
supposing that its master is at home and will be charmed to receive 
me?" 

" No ! " 

" Your cruel commands are implicitly to be obeyed ; though I 
am the most unfortunate fellow in the world, I believe, to have 
been insensible to all other women, and to have fallen prostrate at 
last under the foot of the most beautiful, and the most engaging, 
and the most imperious. My dearest Louisa, I cannot go myself, 
or let you go, in this hard abuse of your power." 

Mrs. Sparsit saw him detain her with his encircling arm, and 
heard him then and there, within her (Mrs. Sparsit's) greedy hear- 
ing, tell her how he loved her, and how she was the stake for which 
he ardently desired to play away all that he had in life. The 
objects he had lately pursued, turned worthless beside her; such 
success as was almost in his grasp, he flung away from him like 
the dirt it was, compared with her. Its pursuit, nevertheless, if it 
kept him near her, or its renunciation if it took him from her, or 
flight if she shared it, or secrecy if she commanded it, or any fate, 
or every fate, all was alike to him, so that she was true to him, — 
the man who had seen how cast away she was, whom she had 
inspired at their first meeting with an admiration, an interest, of 
which he had thought himself incapable, whom she had received 
into her confidence, who was devotee! to her and adored her. All 
this, and more, in his hurry, and in hers, in the whirl of her own 
gratified malice, in the dread of being discovered, in the rapidly 



HARD TIMES. 591 

increasing noise of heavy rain among the leaves, and a thunder-storm 
rolling up — Mrs. Sparsit received into her mind, set off with such 
an unavoidable halo of confusion and indistinctness, that when at 
length he climbed the fence and led his horse away, she was not 
sure where they were to meet, or when, except that they ha,d said 
it was to bs that night. 

But one of them yet remained in the darkness before her ; and 
while she tracked that one she must be right. " Oh, my dearest 
love," thought Mrs. Sparsit, " you little think how well attended 
you are ! " 

Mrs. Sparsit saw her out of the wood, and saw her enter the 
house. What to do next ? It rained now, in a sheet of water. 
Mrs. Sparsit's white stockings were of many colours, green predom- 
inating ; prickly things were in her shoes ; caterpillars slung them- 
selves, in hammocks of their own making, from various parts of 
her dress ; rills ran from her bonnet, and her Roman nose. In 
such condition, Mrs. Sparsit stood hidden in the density of the 
shrubbery, considering what next ? 

Lo, Louisa coming out of the house ! Hastily cloaked and 
muffled, and stealing away. She elopes ! She falls from the lower- 
most stair, and is swallowed up in the gulf. 

Indifferent to the rain, and moving with a quick determined step, 
she struck into a side-path parallel with the ride. Mrs. Sparsit fol- 
lowed in the shadow of the trees, at but a short distance ; for it 
was not easy to keep a figure in view going quickly through the 
umbrageous darkness. 

When slje stopped to close the side-gate without noise, Mrs. 
Sparsit stopped. When she went on, Mrs. Sparsit went on. She 
went by the way Mrs. Sparsit had come, emerged from the green 
lane, crossed the stony road, and ascended the wooden steps to the 
railroad. A train for Coketown would come through presently, 
Mrs. Sparsit knew; so she understood Coketown to be her first 
place of destination. 

In Mrs. Sparsit's limp and streaming state, no extensive precau- 
tions were necessary to change her usual appearance ; but, she 
stopped under the lee of the station wall, tumbled her shawl into 
a new shape, and put it on over her bonnet. So disguised she had 
no fear of being recognised when she followed up the railroad steps, 
and paid her money in the small ofl&ce. Louisa sat waiting in a 
corner. Mrs. Sparsit sat waiting in another corner. Both listened 
to the thunder, which was loud, and to the rain, as it washed off 
the roof, and pattered on the parapets of the arches. Two or three 
lamps were rained out and blown out ; so, both saw the lightning 
to advantage as it quivered and zigzagged on the iron tracks. 



592 HARD TIMES. 

The seizure of the station with a fit of trembling, gradually- 
deepening to a complaint of the heart, announced the train. Fire 
and steam, and smoke, and red light ; a hiss, a crash, a bell, and a 
shriek ; Louisa put into one carriage, Mrs. Sparsit put into another : 
the little station a desert speck in the thunder-storm. 

Though her teeth chattered in her head from wet and cold, Mrs. 
Sparsit exulted hugely. The figure had plunged down the precipice, 
and she felt herself, as it were, attending on the body. Could she, 
who had been so active in the getting up of the funeral triumph, do 
less than exult? "She will be at Coketown long before him," 
thought Mrs. Sparsit, " though his horse is never so good. Where 
will she wait for him ? And where will they go together ? Patience. 
We shall see." 

The tremendous rain occasioned infinite confusion, when the 
train stopped at its destination. Gutters and pipes had burst, 
drains had overflowed, and streets were under water. In the first 
instant of alighting, Mrs. Sparsit turned her distracted eyes towards 
the waiting coaches, which were in great request. " She will get 
into one," she considered, "and will be away before I can follow in 
another. At all risks of being run over, I must see the number, 
and hear the order given to the coachman." 

But, Mrs. Sparsit was wrong in her calculation. Louisa got into 
no coach, and was already gone. The black eyes kept upon the 
railroad-carriage in which she had travelled, settled upon it a mo- 
ment too late. The door not being opened after several minutes, 
Mrs. Sparsit passed it and repassed it, saw nothing, looked in, and 
found it empty. Wet through and through : with her feet squelch- 
ing and squashing in her shoes whenever she moved ; with a rash 
of rain upon her classical visage ; with a bonnet like an over-ripe 
fig ; with all her clothes spoiled ; with damp impressions of every 
button, string, and hook-and-eye she wore, printed off upon her 
highly connected back ; with a stagnant verdure on her general 
exterior, such as accumulates on an old park fence in a mouldy 
lane; Mrs. Sparsit had no resource but to burst into tears of 
bitterness and say, " I have lost her ! " 



CHAPTER XIL 

DOWN. 

The national dustmen, after entertaining one another with a 
great many noisy little fights among themselves, had dispersed for 
the present, and Mr. Gradgrind was at home for the vacation. 

He sat writing in the room with the deadly statistical clock, 



HARD TIMES. 593 

proving something no doubt ^ — ^ probably, in the main, that the 
Good Samaritan was a Bad Economist. The noise of the rain did not 
disturb him much; but it attracted his attention sufficiently to 
make him raise his head sometimes, as if he were rather remon- 
strating with the elements. When it thundered very loudly, he 
glanced towards Coketown, having it in his mind that some of the 
tall chimneys might be struck by lightning. 

The thunder was rolling into distance, and the rain was pouring 
down like a deluge, when the door of his room opened. He looked 
round the lamp upon his table, and saw, with amazement, his 
eldest daughter. 

"Louisa!" 

" Father, I want to speak to you." 

"What is the matter? How strange you look! And good 
Heaven," said Mr. Gradgrind, wondering more and more, "have 
you come here exposed to this storm ? " 

She put her hands to her dress, as if she hardly knew. " Yes." 
Then she uncovered her head, and letting her cloak and hood fall 
where they might, stood looking at him : so colourless, so dishevelled, 
so defiant and despairing, that he was afraid of her. 

"What is it? I conjure you, Louisa, tell me what is the 
matter." 

She dropped into a chair before him, and put her cold hand on 
his arm. 

" Father, you have trained me from my cradle ? " 

"Yes, Louisa." 

"I curse the hour in which I was born to such a destiny." 

He looked at her in doubt and dread, vacantly repeating : " Curse 
the hour ? Curse the hour 1 " 

" How could you give me life, and take from me all the inap- 
preciable things that raise it from the state of conscious death ? 
Where are the graces of my soul ? Where are the sentiments of 
my heart 1 What have you done, father, what have you done, 
with the garden that should have bloomed once, in this great 
wilderness here ! " 

She struck herself with both her hands upon her bosom. 

" If it had ever been here, its ashes alone would save me from 
the void in which my whole life sinks. I did not mean to say 
this ; but, father, you remember the last time we conversed in this 
room?" 

He had been so wholly unprepared for what he heard now, that 
it was with difficulty he answered, "Yes, Louisa." 

" What has risen to my lips now, would have risen to my lips 
then, if you had given me a moment's help. I don't reproach you. 



594 HARD TIMES. 

father. What you have never nurtured in me, you have never 
nurtured in yourself; but ! if you had only done so long ago, or 
if you had only neglected me, what a much better and much hap- 
pier creature I should have been this day ! " 

On hearing this, after all his care, he bowed his head upon his 
hand and groaned aloud. 

" Father, if you had known, when we were last together here, 
what even I feared while I strove against it — as it has been my 
task from infancy to strive against every natural prompting that 
has arisen in my heart ; if you had known that there lingered in 
my breast, sensibilities, affections, weaknesses capable of being cher- 
ished into strength, defying all the calculations ever made by man, 
and no more known to his arithmetic than his Creator is, — would 
you have given me to the husband whom I am now sure that I 
hate?" 

He said, " No. No, my poor child." 

''Would you have doomed me, at any time, to the frost and 
blight that have hardened and spoiled me? Would you have 
robbed me — for no one's enrichment — only for the greater des- 
olation of this world — of the immaterial part of my life, the spring 
and summer of my belief, my refuge from what is sordid and bad 
in the real things around me, my school in which I should have 
learned to be more humble and more trusting with them, and to 
hope in my little sphere to make them better ? " 

"0 no, no. No, Louisa." 

" Yet, father, if I had been stone blind; if I had groped my way 
by my sense of touch, and had been free, while I knew the shapes 
and surfaces of things, to exercise my fancy somewhat, in regard to 
them; I should have been a million times wiser, happier, more 
loving, more contented, more innocent and human in all good 
respects, than I am with the eyes I have. Now, hear what I 
have come to say." 

He moved, to support her with his arm. She rising as he did 
so, they stood close together : she, with a hand upon his shoulder, 
looking fixedly in his face. 

" With a hunger and thirst upon me, father, which have never 
been for a moment appeased ; with an ardent impulse towards 
some region where rules, and figures, and definitions were not quite 
absolute ; I have grown up, battling every inch of my way." 

"I never knew you were unhappy, my child." 

" Father, I always knew it. In this strife I have almost repulsed 
and crushed my better angel into a demon. What I have learned 
has left me doubting, misbelieving, despising, regretting, what I 
have not learned; and my dismal resource has been to think that 



HARD TIMES. 595 

life would soon go by, and that nothing in it could be worth the 
pain and trouble of a contest." 

" And you so young, Louisa ! " he said with pity. 

"And I so young. In this condition, father — for I show you 
now, without fear or favour, the ordinary deadened state of my 
mind as I know it — you proposed my husband to me. I took 
him. I never made a pretence to him or you that I loved him. 
I knew, and, father, you knew, and he knew, that I never did. 
I was not wholly indifferent, for I had a hope of being pleasant 
and useful to Tom. I made that wild escape into something vis- 
ionary, and have slowly found out how wild it was. But Tom had 
been the subject of all the little tenderness of my life ; perhaps he 
became so because I knew so well how to pity him. It matters 
little now, except as it may dispose you to think more leniently of 
his errors." 

As her father held her in his arms, she put her other hand upon 
his other shoulder, and still looking fixedly in his face, went on. 

" When I was irrevocably married, there rose up into rebellion 
against the tie, the old strife, made fiercer by aU those causes of 
disparity which arise out of our two individual natures, and which 
no general laws shall ever rule or state for me, father, until they 
shall be able to direct the anatomist where to strike his knife into 
the secrets of my soul." 

" Louisa ! " he said, and said imploringly ; for he well remembered 
what had passed between them in their former interview. 

" I do not reproach you, father, I make no complaint. I am 
here with another object." 

" What can I do, child ? Ask me what you will." 

" I am coming to it. Father, chance then threw into my way a 
new acquaintance; a man such as I had had no experience of; 
used to the world ; light, polished, easy ; making no pretences ; 
avowing the low estimate of everything, that I was half afraid 
to form in secret ; conveying to me almost immediately, though I 
don't know how or by what degrees, that he understood me, and 
read my thoughts. I could not find that he was worse than I. 
There seemed to be a near afiinity between us. I only wondered 
it should be worth his while, who cared for nothing else, to care so 
much for me." 

" For you, Louisa ! " 

Her father might instinctively have loosened his hold, but that 
he felt her strength departing from her, and saw a wild dilating 
fire in the eyes steadfastly regarding him. 

"I say nothing of his plea for claiming my confidence. It 
matters very little how he gained it. Father, he did gain it. 



596 HAED TIMES. 

What you know of tlie story of my marriage, he soon knew, just 
as well." 

Her father's face was ashy white, and he held her in both his 
arms. 

"I have done no worse, I have not disgraced you. But if you 
ask me whether I have loved him, or do love him, I tell you 
plainly, father, that it may be so. I don't know." 

She took her hands suddenly from his shoulders, and pressed 
them both upon her side ; while in her face, not like itself — 
and in her figure, drawn up, resolute to finish by a last efi'ort what 
she had to say — the feelings long suppressed broke loose. 

"This night, my husband being away, he has been with me, 
declaring himself my lover. This minute he expects me, for 
I could release myself of his presence by no other means. I do 
not know that I am sorry, I do not know that I am ashamed, I do 
not know that I am degraded in my own esteem. All that I know 
is, your philosophy and your teaching will not save me. Now, 
father, you have brought me to this. Save me by some other 
means ! " 

He tightened his hold in time to prevent her sinking on the 
floor, but she cried out in a terrible voice, "I shall die if you hold 
me ! Let me fall upon the ground ! " And he laid her down 
there, and saw the pride of his heart and the triumph of his sys- 
tem, lying, an insensible heap, at his feet. 



BOOK THE THIRD. — aABNEBWa, 
CHAPTER I. 

ANOTHER THING NEEDFUL. 

Louisa awoke from a torpor, and her eyes languidly opened on 
her old bed at home, and her old room. It seemed, at fii'st, as if 
all that had happened since the days when these objects were 
familiar to her were the shadows of a dream ; but gradually, as 
the objects became more real to her sight, the events became more 
real to her mind. 

She could scarcely move her head for pain and heaviness, her 
eyes were strained and sore, and she was very weak. A curious 
passive inattention had such possession of her, that the presence of 
her little sister in the room did not attract her notice for some time. 
Even when their eyes had met, and her sister had approached the 
bed, Louisa lay for minutes looking at her in silence, and suffering 
her timidly to hold her passive hand, before she asked : 

" When was I brought to this room ? " 

" Last night, Louisa." 

" Who brought me here ? " 

" Sissy, I believe." 

" Why do you believe so ? " 

" Because I found her here this morning. She didn't come to 
my bedside to wake me, as she always does ; and I went to look 
for her. She was not in her own room either ; and I went looking 
for her all over the house, until I found her here taking care of you 
and cooling your head. Will you see father 1 Sissy said I was to 
tell him when you woke." 

" What a beaming face you have, Jane ! " said Louisa, as her 
young sister — timidly still — bent down to kiss her. 

" Have I ? I am very glad you think so. I am sure it must 
be Sissy's doing." 

t The arm Louisa had begun to twine about her neck, unbent 
itself. " You can tell father if you will." Then, staying her a 

597 



598 HARD TIMES. 

moment, she said, " It was you who made my room so cheerful, 
and gave it this look of welcome ? " 

"Oh no, Louisa, it was done before I came. It was " 

Louisa turned upon her pillow, and heard no more. When her 
sister had withdrawn, she turned her head back again, and lay 
with her face towards the door, until it opened and her father 
entered. 

He had a jaded anxious look upon him, and his hand, usually 
steady, trembled in hers. He sat down at the side of the bed, 
tenderly asking how she was, and dwelling upon the necessity 
of her keeping very quiet after her agitation and exposure to the 
weather last night. He spoke in a subdued and troubled voice, 
very different from his usual dictatorial manner ; and was often at 
a loss for words. 

"My dear Louisa. My poor daughter." He was so much at a 
loss at that place, that he stopped altogether. He tried again. 

" My unfortunate child." The place was so difficult to get over, 
that he tried again. 

" It would be hopeless for me, Louisa, to endeavour to tell you 
how overwhelmed I have been, and still am, by what broke upon 
me last night. The ground on Avhich I stand has ceased to be 
solid under my feet. The only support on which I leaned, and the 
strength of which it seemed and still does seem, impossible to 
question, has given way in an instant. I am stunned by these 
discoveries. I have no selfish meaning in what I say ; but I find 
the shock of what broke upon me last night, to be veiy heavy 
indeed." 

She could give him no comfort herein. She had suffered the 
wreck of her whole life upon the rock. 

" I will not say, Louisa, that if you had by any happy chance 
undeceived me some time ago, it would have been better for us 
both ; better for your peace, and better for mine. For I am sensi- 
ble that it may not have been a part of my system to invite any 
confidence of that kind. I have proved my — my system to my- 
self, and I have rigidly administered it; and I must bear the 
responsibility of its failures. I only entreat you to believe, my 
favourite child, that I have meant to do right." 

He said it earnestly, and to do him justice he had. In gauging 
fathomless deeps with his little mean excise-rod, and in staggering 
over the universe with his rusty stiff-legged compasses, he had 
meant to do great things. Within the limits of his short tether he 
had tumbled about, annihilating the flowers of existence with greater 
singleness of purpose than many of the blatant personages whoset 
company he kept. 



HARD TIMES. 599 

" I am well assured of what you say, father. I know I have 
been your favourite child. I know you have intended to make me 
happy. I have never blamed you, and I never shall." 

He took her outstretched hand, and retained it in his. 

"My dear, I have remained all night at my table, pondering 
again and again on what has so painfully passed between us. When 
I consider your character; when I consider that what has been 
known to me for hours, has been concealed by you for years ; when 
I consider under what immediate pressure it has been forced from 
you at last ; I come to the conclusion that I cannot but mistrust 
myself." 

He might have added more than all, when he saw the face now 
looking at him. He did add^it in effect, perhaps, as he softly 
moved her scattered hair from her forehead with his hand. Such 
little actions, slight in another man, were very noticeable in him ; 
and his daughter received them as if they had been words of 
contrition. 

" But," said Mr. Gradgrind, slowly, and with hesitation, as well 
as with a wretched sense of helplessness, " if I see reason to mis- 
trust myself for the past, Louisa, I should also mistrust myself for 
the present and the future. To speak unreservedly to you, I do. 
I am far from feeling convinced now, however differently I might 
have felt only this time yesterday, that I am fit for the trust you 
repose in me ; that I know how to respond to the appeal you have 
come home to make to me ; that I have the right instinct — sup- 
posing it for the moment to be some quality of that nature — how 
to help you, and to set you right, my child." 

She had turned upon her pillow, and lay with her face upon her 
arm, so that he could not see it. All her wildness and passion had 
subsided ; but, though softened, she was not in tears. Her father 
was changed in nothing so much as in the respect that he would 
have been glad to see her in tears. 

"Some persons hold," he pursued, still hesitating, "that there 
is a wisdom of the Head, and that there is a wisdom of the Heart. 
I have not supposed so ; but, as I have said, I mistrust myself 
now. I have supposed the head to be all-sufficient. It may not 
be all-sufficient ; how can I venture this morning to say it is ! 
If that other kind of wisdom should be what I have neglected, and 
should be the instinct that is wanted, Louisa " 

He suggested it very doubtfully, as if he were half unwilling to 
admit it even now. She made him no answer, lying before him on 
her bed, still half dressed, much as he had seen her lying on the 
floor of his room last night. 

"Louisa," and his hand rested on her hair again^ "I have been 



600 HARD TIMES. 

absent from here, my dear, a good deal of late ; and though, your 
sister's training has been pursued according to — the system," he 
appeared to come to that word with great reluctance always, "it 
has necessarily been modified by daily associations begun, in her 
case, at an early age. I ask you — ignorantly and humbly, my 
daughter — for the better, do you think 1 " 

"Father," she replied, without stirring, "if any harmony has 
been awakened in her young breast that was mute in mine until it 
turned to discord, let her thank Heaven for it, and go upon her 
happier way, taking it as her greatest blessing that she has avoided 
my way." 

" my child, my child ! " he said, in a forlorn manner, " I am 
an unhappy man to see you thus ! *What avails it to me that you 
do not reproach me, if I so bitterly reproach myself ! " He bent 
his head, and spoke low to her. " Louisa, I have a misgiving that 
some change may have been slowly working about me in this house, 
by mere love and gratitude : that what the Head had left undone 
and could not do, the Heart may have been doing silently. Can it 
be so ? " 

She made him no reply. 

" I am not too proud to believe it, Louisa. How could I be 
arrogant, and you before me ! Can it be so ? Is it so, my dear ? " 

He looked upon her once more, lying cast away there ; and 
without another word went out of the room. He had not been 
long gone, when she heard a light tread near the door, and knew 
that some one stood beside her. 

She did not raise her head. A dull anger that she should be 
seen in her distress, and that the involuntary look she had so 
resented should come to this fulfilment, smouldered within her 
like an unwholesome fire. All closely imprisoned forces rend and 
destroy. The air that would be healthful to the earth, the water 
that would enrich it, the heat that would ripen it, tear it when 
caged up. So in her bosom even now ; the strongest qualities she 
possessed, long turned upon themselves, became a heap of obdu- 
racy, that rose against a friend. 

It was well that soft touch came upon her neck, and that she 
understood herself to be supposed to have fallen asleep. The sym- 
pathetic hand did not claim her resentment. Let it lie there, let 
it lie. 

It lay there, warming into life a crowd of gentler thoughts ; and 
she rested. As she softened with the quiet, and the consciousness 
of being so watched, some tears made their way into her eyes. 
The face touched hers, and she knew that there were tears upon it 
too, and she the cause of them. 



HARD TIMES. 601 

As Louisa feigned to rouse herself, and sat up, Sissy retired, so 
that she stood placidly near the bedside. 

" I hope I have not disturbed you. I have come to ask if you 
would let me stay with you ? " 

" Why should you stay with me 1 My sister will miss you. You 
are eveiy'thing to her." 

" Am 1 1 '' returned Sissy, shaking her head. " I would be some- 
thing to you, if I might." 

" What 1 " said Louisa, almost sternly. 

" Whatever you want most, if I could be that. At all events, I 
would like to try to be as near it as I can. And however far off that 
may be, I will never tire of trying. Will you let me ? " 

" My father sent you to ask me." 

" Xo indeed," replied Sissy. " He told me that I might come 
in now, but he sent me away from the room this morning — or at 
least — " She hesitated and stopped. 

" At least, what ? " said Louisa, with her searching eyes upon 
her. 

" I thought it best myself that I should be sent away, for I felt 
very uncertain whether you would like to find me here." 

" Have I always hated you so much ? " 

" I hope not, for I have always loved you, and have always 
wished that you should know it. But you changed to me a little, 
shortly before you left home. Xot that I wondered at it. You 
knew so much, and I knew so little, and it was so natural in many 
ways, going as you were among other friends, that I had nothing to 
complain of, and was not at all hurt." 

Her colour rose as she said it modestly and hurriedly. Louisa 
understood the loving pretence, and her heart smote her. 

" May I try 1 " said Sissy, emboldened to raise her hand to the 
neck that was insensibly drooping towards her. 

Louisa, taking down the hand that would have embraced her in 
another moment, held it in one of hers, and answered : 

" First, Sissy, do you know what I am ? I am so proud and 
so hardened, so confused and troubled, so resentful and unjust to 
every one and to myself, that everything is stormy, dark, and wicked 
to me. Does not that repel you 1 " 

" No ! " 

" I am so unhappy, and all that should have made me otherwise 
is so laid waste, that if I had been bereft of sense to this hour, and 
instead of being as learned as you think me, had to begin to acquire 
the simplest truths, I could not want a guide to peace, contentment, 
honour, all the good of which I am quite devoid, more abjectly than 
I do. Does not that repel you 1 " 



602 PIARD TIMES. 

" No ! " 

In the innocence of her brave affection, and brimming up of her 
old devoted spirit, the once deserted girl shone like a beautiful light 
upon the darkness of the other. 

Louisa raised the hand that it might clasp her neck and join its 
fellow there. She fell upon her knees, and clinging to this stroller's 
child looked up at her almost with veneration. 

" Forgive me, pity me, help me ! Have compassion on my great 
need, and let me lay this head of mine upon a loving heart ? " 

"0 lay it here ! " cried Sissy. " Lay it here, my dear." 



CHAPTER II. 

VERY RIDICULOUS. 

Mr. James Harthouse passed a whole night and a day in a 
state of so much huriy, that the World, with its best glass in its 
eye, would scarcely have recognised him during that insane interval, 
as the brother Jem of the honourable and jocular member. He was 
positively agitated. He several times spoke with an emphasis, 
similar to the vulgar manner. He went in and went out in an 
unaccountable way, like a man without an object. He rode like a 
highwayman. In a word, he was so horribly bored by existing 
circumstances, that he forgot to go in for boredom in the manner 
prescribed by the authorities. 

After putting his horse at Coketown through the storm, as if it 
were a leap, he waited up all night : from time to time ringing his 
bell with the greatest fury, charging the porter who kept watch 
with delinquency in witliholding letters or messages that could not 
fail to have been entrusted to him, and demanding restitution on 
the spot. The dawn coming, the morning coming, and the day 
coming, and neither message nor letter coming with either, he went 
down to the country-house. There, the report was, Mr. Bounderby 
away, and Mrs. Bounderby in town. Left for town suddenly last 
evening. Not even known to be gone until receipt of message, 
importing that her return was not to be expected for the present. 

In these circumstances he had nothing for it but to follow her 
to town. He went to the house in town. Mrs. Bounderby not 
there. He looked in at the Bank. Mr. Bounderby away and Mrs. 
Sparsit away. Mrs. Sparsit away ? Who could have been reduced 
to sudden extremity for the company of that griffin ! 

" Well ! I don't know," said Tom, who had his ONvn reasons for 
being uneasy about it. " She was off somewhere at daybreak this 



HARD TIMES. 603 

morning. She's always full of mystery ; I hate her. So I do that 
white chap ; he's always got his bUnking eyes upon a fellow." 

"Where were you last night, Tom ? " 

" ^^^lere was I last night ! " said Tom. " Come ! I like that. 
I was waiting for you, Mr. Harthouse, till it came down as / never 
saw it come down before. "Where was I too ! Where were you, 
you mean." 

"I was prevented from coming — detained." 

"Detained ! " murmured Tom. " Two of us were detained. I 
was detained looking for you, till I lost every train but the mail. 
It would have been a pleasant job to go down by that on such a 
night, and have to walk home through a pond. I was obhged to 
sleep in town after all." 

"^\Tiere?" 

" Where ? Why, in my own bed at Bounderby's." 

" Did you see your sister ?" 

"How the deuce," returned Tom, staring, "could I see my sister 
when she was fifteen miles off?" 

Cursing these quick retorts of the yoimg gentleman to whom he 
was so true a friend, Mr. Harthouse disembarrassed himself of that 
interview with the smallest conceivable amount of ceremony, and 
debated for the hundredth time what all this could mean 1 He 
made only one thing clear. It was, that whether she was in the 
town or out of to^vn, whether he had been premature with her who 
was so hard to comprehend, or she had lost courage, or they were 
discovered, or some mischance or mistake, at present incomprehen- 
sible, had occurred, he must remain to confront his fortune, what- 
ever it was. The hotel where he was known to live when 
condemned to that region of blackness, was the stake to which he 
was tied. As to all the rest — What will be, will be. 

" So, whether I am waiting for a hostile message, or an assigna- 
tion, or a penitent remonstrance, or an impromptu wrestle with my 
friend Bounderby in the Lancashire manner — which would seem 
as likely as anything else in the present state of affairs — I'll dine," 
said Mr. James Harthouse. "Bounderby has the advantage in 
point of weight ; and if anything of a British nature is to come off 
between us, it may be as well to be in training." 

Therefore he rang the bell, and tossing himself negligently on a 
sofa, ordered "Some dinner at six — with a beefsteak in it," and 
got through the intervening time as well as he could. That was 
not particularly well ; for he remained in the greatest perplexity, 
and, as the hours went on, and no kind of explanation offered itself, 
his perplexity augmented at compound interest. 

However, he took affairs as coolly as it was in human nature to 



604 HARD TIMES. 

do, and entertained himself with the facetious idea of the training 
more than once. " It wouldn't be bad," he yawned at one time, 
"to give the waiter five shillings, and throw him." At another 
time it occurred to him, " Or a fellow of about thirteen or fourteen 
stone might be hired by the hour." But these jests did not tell 
materially on the afternoon, or his suspense ; and, sooth to say, they 
both lagged fearfully. 

It was impossible, even before dinner, to avoid often walking about 
in the pattern of the carpet, looking out of the window, listening at 
the door for footsteps, and occasionally becoming rather hot when 
any steps approached that room. But, after dinner, when the day 
turned to twilight, and the twilight turned to night, and still no 
communication was made to him, it began to be as he expressed it, 
" like the Holy Office and slow torture." However, still true to 
his conviction that indifi'erence was the genuine high-breeding (the 
only conviction he had), he seized this crisis as the opportunity for 
ordering candles and a newspaper. 

He had been trying in vain, for half an hour, to read this news- 
paper, when the waiter appeared and said, at once mysteriously 
and apologetically : 

"Beg your pardon, sir. You are wanted, sir, if you please." 

A general recollection that this was the kind of thing the Police 
said to the swell mob, caused Mr. Harthouse to ask the waiter in 
return, with bristling indignation, what the Devil he meant by 
"wanted"? 

" Beg your pardon, sir. Young lady outside, sir, wishes to see 
you." 

"Outside? Where?" 

" Outside this door, sir." 

Giving the waiter to the personage before mentioned, as a block- 
head duly qualified for that consignment, Mr. Harthouse hurried 
into the gallery. A young woman whom he had never seen stood 
there. Plainly dressed, very quiet, very pretty. As he conducted 
her into the room and placed a chair for her, he observed, by the 
light of the candles, that she was even prettier than he had at first 
believed. Her face was innocent and youthful, and its expression 
remarkably pleasant. She was not afraid of him, or in any way 
disconcerted ; she seemed to have her mind entirely preoccupied 
with the occasion of her visit, and to have substituted that consid- 
eration for herself. 

" I speak to Mr. Harthouse ? " she said, when they were alone. 

" To Mr. Harthouse." He added in his mind, "And you speak 
to him with the most confiding eyes I ever saw, and the most 
earnest voice , (though so quiet) I ever heard." 



HARD TIMES. 605 

" If I do not understand — and I do not, sir " — said Sissy, 
" what j^oiir honour as a gentleman binds you to, in other matters : " 
the blood really rose in his face as she began in these words : "I 
am sure I may rely upon it to keep my visit secret, and to keep 
secret what I am going to say. I will rely upon it, if you will tell 
me I may so far trust — " 

" You may, I assure you." 

" I am young, as you see ; I am alone, as you see. In coming 
to you, sir, I have no advice or encouragement beyond my own 
hope." 

He thought " But that is very strong," as he followed the 
momentary upward glance of her eyes. He thought besides, " This 
is a very odd beginning. I don't see where we are going." 

"I think," said Sissy, "you have already guessed whom I left 
just now ! " 

" I have been in the greatest concern and uneasiness during the 
last four-and-twenty hours (which have appeared as many years)," 
he returned, " on a lady's account. The hopes I have been encour- 
aged to form that you come from that lady, do not deceive me, I 
trust." 

" I left her within an hour." 

"At !" 

"At her father's." 

Mr. Harthouse's face lengthened in spite of his coolness, and his 
perplexity increased. "Then I certainly," he thought, "do not 
see where we are going." 

" She hurried there last night. She arrived there in great agi- 
tation, and was insensible all through the night. I live at her 
father's, and was with her. You may be sure, sir, you wiU never 
see her again as long as you live." 

Mr. Harthouse drew a long breath; and, if ever man found him- 
self in the position of not knowing what to say, made the discovery 
beyond all question that he was so circumstanced. The childlike 
ingenuousness with which his visitor spoke, her modest fearlessness, 
her truthfulness which put aU artifice aside, her entire forgetfiilness 
of herself in her earnest quiet holding to the object with which she 
had come ; all this, together with her reliance on his easily given 
promise — which in itself shamed him — presented something in 
which he was so inexperienced, and against which he knew any of 
his usual weapons would fall so powerless, that not a word could 
he rally to his relief 

At last he said : 

" So startling an announcement, so confidently made, and by 
such lips, is really disconcerting in the last degree. May I be 



606 HARD TIMES. 

permitted to iuquire, if you are charged to convey that information 
to me in those hopeless words, by the lady of whom we speak ? " 

" I have no charge from her." 

" The drowning man catches at the straw. With no disrespect 
for your judgment, and with no doubt of your sincerity, excuse my 
saying that I cling to the belief that there is yet hope that I am 
not condemned to perpetual exile from that lady's presence." 

" There is not the least hope. The first object of my coming 
here, sir, is to assure you that you must believe that there is no 
more hope of your ever speaking with her again, than there would 
be if she had died when she came home last night." 

" Must believe ? But if I can't — or if I should, by infirmity of 
nature, be obstinate — and won't — " 

"It is still true. There is no hope." 

James Harthouse looked at her with an incredulous smile upon 
his lips ; but her mind looked over and beyond him, and the smile 
was quite thrown away. 

He bit his lip, and took a little time for consideration. 

"Well ! If it should unhappily appear," he said, "after due pains 
and duty on my part, that I am brought to a position so desolate as 
this banishment, I shall not become the lady's persecutor. But 
you said you had no commission from her 1 " 

" I have only the commission of my love for her, and her love for 
me. I have no other trust, than that I have been with her since she 
came home, and that she has given me her confidence. I have no 
further trust, than that I know something of her character and her 
marriage. Mr. Harthouse, I think you had that trust too ! " 

He was touched in the cavity where his heart shoidd have been 
— in that nest of addled eggs, where the birds of heaven would 
have lived if they had not been whistled away — by the fervour of 
this reproach. 

" I am not a moral sort of fellow," he said, " and I never make 
any pretensions to the character of a moral sort of fellow. I am as 
immoral as need be. At the same time, in bringing any distress 
upon the lady who is the subject of the present conversation, or in 
unfortunately compromising her in any way, or in committing my- 
self by any expression of sentiments towards her, not perfectly 
reconcilable with — in fact with — the domestic hearth ; or in 
taking any advantage of her father's being a machine, or of her 
brother's being a whelp, or of her husband's being a bear ; I beg 
to be allowed to assure you that I have had no particularly evil 
intentions, but have glided on from one step to another with a 
smoothness so perfectly diabolical, that I had not the slightest idea 
the catalogue was half so long until I began to turn it over. 



HARD TIMES. 



607 



"Tiereas I find,'' said Mr. James HartJioaige, in conditacMi, "that 

5 maBj in sereral volranesu'* 

XhaDg^ he said aU this in his inrakms waj, ihe way seemed, 
fcr that onoe, a cmsdoos ptdidiing <^ but an n^ sarhuee. He 
was sflcnt for a miMnent ; and tiien proceeded with a move seif- 
poesessed ^. t!!Of]^ with teaces of Texatioii and dxsappainfmeiit 
rtia: ~ r pdished out. 

_-^: i5 T:«een JDst now refHCsented to me, in a manner 

1 ±^ doabt — I knowc^ haidty any other source 

-e aceqiteditso readify — I fed bound to 
:<nfide»ceyoa have ment«Hied has been 
ic^- ---_ I-:.: Z : r:=T to contemplate the possibility (how- 

ererraie^ie:: " t _ the ladynomcHe. I am soldtyto 

faiamefor thr . vi. llt to this — and — and, I cannot 

say,** he a»il : r a general penxaticMi, "that 

I haTe any i_ _t ~ ^r becoming a moial ?:t 

of fdlow, or -._:..- I L.: ^ ^ _ any HHwad sort of :! — 

whatevCT." 

Sssy's face snflfcienth' shofwed that her appeal to tin — - iiii 
finmhed. 

"YoaspokT. iiT Tt l:^ ? she raisrl iz: t~t- :; Lizi :^ in. 
"ofyonrfirs: : : I :_ ~ _t :L : :i i: : :" :: ^e 

mentioned?" 
Yes." 

"Will yoQ oUige ilt - ::z± _ i; i 

"Mr. Haztfaoose,"" r: „ " ^ ^ritii a Mending of gentieneas 



and steadiness ih:/ 
in his being bo:iz 
singular disad^an: 
is to kaTe hoe in 
can mitigate in r : 
I am quite srare ti 
your power to n 
is enough; but i: 
thoog^ without : 
even without the 
myself I a^ t: 
oUigatkm c-'-tT 

Ksheha 
in the tzuUi i : 
least doubt :: r: 



i with a simple cmfidoice 

lired. that hdd him at a 

lijt remains witii you, 

_ n q*Bte sure that you 

: Tou have dme. 

1 : : haTe left it in 

n L or tiiatit 

: - Tlierefiae, 

. ~T ^'I'^tI " .'Z. and 



ice oTer him beyon 
_r said; if sLf i 
:iiirbourBd : : 



any resQ-re : 7:17 „ — 

tiaceof anv = l ::: 1-^ : _: 
remonstxance he migjib i^'cs ; he woiini u^tc 



608 HARD TIMES. 

at this point. But he could as easily have changed a clear sky by 
looking at it in surprise, as affect her. 

"But do you know," he asked, quite at a loss, "the extent of 
what you ask ? You probably are not aware that I am here on a 
public kind of business, preposterous enough in itself, but which I 
have gone in for, and sworn by, and am supposed to be devoted to 
in quite a desperate manner 1 You probably are not aware of that, 
but I assure you it's the fact." 

It had no effect on Sissy, fact or no fact. 

"Besides which," said Mr. Harthouse, taking a turn or two 
across the room, dubiously, " it's so alarmingly absurd. It would 
make a man so ridiculous, after going in for these fellows, to back 
out in such an incomprehensible way." 

"I am quite sure," repeated Sissy, "that it is the only repara- 
tion in your power, sir. I am quite sure, or I would not have 
come here." 

He glanced at her face, and walked about again. "Upon my 
soul, I don't know what to say. So immensely absurd ! " 

It fell to his lot, now, to stipulate for secrecy. 

" If I were to do such a very ridiculous thing," he said, stopping 
again presently, and leaning against the chimney-piece, " it could 
only be in the most inviolable confidence." 

"I will trust to you, sir," returned Sissy, "and you will trust 
to me." 

His leaning against the chimney-piece reminded him of the night 
with the whelp. It was the self-same chimney-piece, and somehow 
he felt as if he were the whelp to-night. He could make no way 
at all. 

" I suppose a man never was placed in a more ridiculous position," 
he said, after looking down, and looking up, and laughing, and 
frowning, and walking off, and walking back again. " But I see 
no way out of it. What will be, will be. This will be, I suppose. 
I must take off myself, I imagine — in short, I engage to do it." 

Sissy rose. She was not surprised by the result, but she was 
happy in it, and her face beamed brightly. 

"You will permit me to say," continued Mr. James Harthouse, 
" that I doubt if any other ambassador, or ambassadress, could 
have addressed me with the same success. I must not only regard 
myself as being in a very ridiculous position, but as being van- 
quished at all points. Will you allow me the privilege of remem- 
bering my enemy's name ? " 

" Mt/ name ? " said the ambassadress. 

" The only name I could possibly care to know, to-night." 

"Sissy Jupe." 



HARD TIMES. 609 

" Pardon my curiosity at parting. Related to the family ? " 

"I am only a poor girl," returned Sissy. "I was separated 
from my father — he was only a stroller — and taken pity on by 
Mr. Gradgrind. I have lived in the house ever since." 

She was gone. 

"It wanted this to complete the defeat," said Mr. James Hart- 
house, sinking, with a resigned air, on the sofa, after standing 
transfixed a little while. " The defeat may now be considered 
perfectly accomplished. Only a poor girl — only a stroller — only 
James Harthouse made nothing of — only James Harthouse a 
Great Pyramid of failure." 

The Great Pyramid put it into his head to go up the Nile. 
He took a pen upon the instant, and wrote the following not (in 
appropriate hieroglyphics) to his brother : 

" Dear Jack, — All up at Coketown. Bored out of the place, 
and going in for camels. 

" Affectionately, 

"Jem." 

He rang the bell. 

" Send my fellow here." 

" Gone to bed, sir." 

" Tell him to get up, and pack up." 

He wrote two more notes. One to Mr. Bounderby, announcing 
his retirement from that part of the country, and showing where 
he would be found for the next fortnight. The other, similar in 
effect, to Mr. Gradgrind. Almost as soon as the ink was dry upon 
their superscriptions, he had left the tall chimneys of Coketown 
behind, and was in a railway carriage, tearing and glaring over the 
dark landscape. 

The moral sort of fellows might suppose that Mr. James Hart- 
house derived some comfortable reflections afterwards, from this 
prompt retreat, as one of his few actions that made any amends for 
anything, and as a token to himself that he had escaped the climax 
of a very bad business. But it was not so, at all. A secret sense 
of having failed and been ridiculous — a dread of what other fel- 
lows who went in for similar sorts of things, would say at his 
expense if they knew it — - so oppressed him, that what was about 
the very best passage in his life was the one of all others he would 
not have owned to on any account, and the only one that made him 
ashamed of himself. 



610^ HARD TIMES. 

CHAPTER III. 

VERY DECIDED. 

The indefatigable Mrs. Sparsit, with a violent cold upon her, 
her voice reduced to a whisper, and her stately frame so racked by 
continual sneezes that it seemed in danger of dismemberment, gave 
chase to her patron until she found him in the metropolis ; and 
there, majestically sweeping in upon him at his hotel in St. James's 
Street, exploded the combustibles with which she was charged, and 
blew up. Having executed her mission with infinite relish, this 
high-minded woman then fainted away on Mr. Bounderby's coat- 
collar. 

Mr. Bounderby's first procedure was to shake Mrs. Sparsit off, 
and leave her to progress as she might through various stages of 
suffering on the floor. He next had recourse to the administration 
of potent restoratives, such as screwing the patient's thumbs, smit- 
ing her hands, abundantly watering her face, and inserting salt in 
her mouth. When these attentions had recovered her (which they 
speedily did), he hustled her into a fast train without offering any 
other refreshment, and carried her back to Coketown more dead 
than alive. 

Regarded as a classical ruin, Mrs. Sparsit was an interesting 
spectacle on her arrival at her journey's end; but considered in any 
other light, the amount of damage she had by that time sustained 
was excessive, and impaired her claims to admiration. Utterly 
heedless of the wear and tear of her clothes and constitution, and 
adamant to her pathetic sneezes, Mr. Bounderby immediately 
crammed her into a coach, and bore her off to Stone Lodge. 

"Now, Tom Gradgrind," said Bounderby, bursting into his 
father-in-law's room late at night; "here's a lady here — Mrs. 
Sparsit — you know Mrs. Sparsit — who has something to say to 
you that will strike you dumb." 

"You have missed my letter ! " exclaimed Mr. Gradgrind, sur- 
prised by the apparition. 

" Missed your letter, sir ! " bawled Bounderby. " The present 
time is no time for letters. No man shall talk to Josiah Boun- 
derby of Coketown about letters, with his mind in the state it's in 
now." 

" Bounderby," said Mr. Gradgrind, in a tone of temperate remon- 
strance, " I speak of a very special letter I have written to you, in 
reference to Louisa." 

" Tom Gradgrind," replied Bounderby, knocking the flat of his 
hand several times with great vehemence on the table, " I speak of 



HARD TIMES. 611 

a very special messenger that has come to me, in reference to 
Louisa. Mrs. Sparsit, ma'am, stand forward ! " 

That unfortunate lady hereupon essaying to offer testimony, with- 
out any voice and with painful gestures expressive of an inflamed 
throat, became so aggravating and underwent so many facial con- 
tortions, that Mr. Bounderby, unable to bear it, seized her by the 
arm and shook her. 

"If you can't get it out, ma'am," said Bounderby, "leave me to 
get it out. This is not a time for a lady, however highly connected, 
to be totally inaudible, and seemingly swallowing marbles. Tom 
Gradgrind, Mrs. Sparsit latterly found herself, by accident, in a 
situation to overhear a conversation out of doors between your 
daughter and your precious gentleman friend, Mr. James Hart- 
house," 

" Indeed ! " said Mr. Gradgrind. 

"Ah! Indeed!" cried Bounderby. "And in that conversa- 
tion " 

"It is not necessary to repeat its tenor, Bounderby. I know 
what passed." 

"You do? Perhaps," said Bounderby, starting with all his 
might at his so quiet and assuasive father-in-law, " you know where 
your daughter is at the present time ! " 

" Undoubtedly. She is here." 

" Here 1 " 

"My dear Bounderby, let me beg you to restrain these loud out- 
breaks, on all accounts. Louisa is here. The moment she could 
detach herself from that interview with the person of whom you 
speak, and whom I deeply regret to have been the means of intro- 
ducing to you, Louisa hurried here, for protection. I myself had 
not been at home many hours, when I received her — here, in this 
room. She hurried by the train to town, she ran from to\\m to 
this house through a raging storm, and presented herself before me 
in a state of distraction. Of course, she has remained here ever 
since. Let me entreat you, for your ovm. sake and for hers, to be 
more quiet." 

Mr. Bounderby silently gazed about him for some moments, in 
every direction except Mrs. Sparsit's direction ; and then, abruptly 
turning upon the niece of Lady Scadgers, said to that wretched 
woman : 

"Now, ma'am ! We shaU be happy to hear any little apology 
you may think proper to ofl'er, for going about the country at 
express pace, with no other luggage than a Cock-and-a-Bull, 
ma'am ! " 

"Sir," whispered Mrs. Sparsit, "my nerves are at present too 



612 HARD TIMES. 

much shaken, and my health is at present too much impaired, in 
your service, to admit of my doing more than taking refuge in 

(Which she did.) 

"Well, ma'am," said Bounderby, "without making any obser- 
vation to you that may not be made with propriety to a woman of 
good family, what I have got to add to that, is that there is some- 
thing else in which it appears to me you may take refuge, namely, 
a coach. And the coach in which we came here, being at the door, 
you'll allow me to hand you down to it, and pack you home to the 
Bank : where the best course for you to pursue, will be to put your 
feet into the hottest water you can bear, and take a glass of scald- 
ing rum and butter after you get into bed." With these words, 
Mr. Bounderby extended his right hand to the weeping lady, and 
escorted her to the conveyence in question, shedding many plain- 
tive sneezes by the way. He soon returned alone. 

" X ow, as you showed me in your face, Tom G-radgrind, that you 
wanted to speak to me," he resumed, "here I am. But, I am not 
in a veiy agreeable state, I tell you plainly : not relishing this busi- 
ness, even as it is, and not considering that I am at any time as 
dutifully and submissively treated by your daughter, as Josiah 
Bounderby of Coketo^^^l ought to be treated by his wife. You 
have your opinion, I dare say ; and I have mine, I know. If you 
mean to say anything to me to-night, that goes against this candid 
remark, you had better let it alone." 

Mr. Gradgrind, it will be observed, being much softened, Mr. 
Bounderby took particular pains to harden himself at all points. 
It was his amiable nature. 

"My dear Bounderby," Mr. Gradgrind began in reply. 

"Now, you'll excuse me," said Bounderby, "but I don't want 
to be too dear. That, to start with. When I begin to be dear to 
a man, I generally find that his intention is to come over me. I 
am not speaking to you politely ; but, as you are aware, I am not 
polite. If you like politeness, you know where to get it. You 
have your gentleman friends you know, and they'll seri'-e you with 
as much of the article as you want. I don't keep it myself." 

"Bounderby," urged Mr. Gradgrind, "we are all liable to mis- 
takes " " 

"I thought you couldn't make 'em," interrupted Bounderby. 

" Perhaps I thought so. But, I say we are all liable to mis- 
takes ; and I should feel sensible of your delicacy, and grateful for 
it, if you would spare me these references to Harthouse. I shall 
not associate him in our conversation with your intimacy and 
encouragement; pray do not persist in connecting him with mine." 



HARD TIMES. 613 

" I never mentioned his name ! " said Bounderby. 

" Well, well ! " returned Mr. Gradgi-ind, with a patient, even a 
submissive, air. And he sat for a little while pondering. " Boun- 
derby, I see reason to doubt whether we have ever quite understood 
Louisa." 

" Who do you mean by We ? " 

" Let me say I, then," he returned, in answer to the coarsely 
blurted question ; " I doubt whether I have understood Louisa. 
I doubt whether I have been quite right in the manner of her 
education." 

" There you hit it," returned Bounderby. " There I agree with 
you. You have found it out at last, have you ? Education ! 
I'll tell you what education is — To be tumbled out of doors, neck 
and crop, and put upon the shortest allowance of everything except 
blows. That's what / call education." 

"I think your good sense will perceive," Mr. Gradgrind remon- 
strated in all humility, " that whatever the merits of such a system 
may be, it would be difficult of general application to girls." 

"I don't see it at all, sir," returned the obstinate Bounderby. 

"Well," sighed Mr. Gradgrind, "we will not enter into the 
question. I assure you I have no desire to be controversial. I 
seek to repair what is amiss, if I possibly can ; and I hope you 
will assist me in a good spirit, Bounderby, for I have been 
very much distressed." 

" I don't understand you, yet," said Bounderby, with determined 
obstinacy, " and therefore I won't make any promises." 

"In the course of a few hours, my dear Bounderby," Mr. Grad- 
grind proceeded, in the same depressed and propitiatoiy manner, 
" I appear to myself to have become better informed as to Louisa's 
character, than in previous years. The enlightenment has been 
painfully forced upon me, and the discovery is not mine. I think 
there are — Bounderby, you will be surprised to hear me say this 

— I think there are qualities in Louisa, which — which have been 
harshly neglected, and — and a little perverted. And — and I 
would suggest to you, that — that if you would kindly meet me in 
a timely endeavour to leave her to her better nature for a while 

— and to encourage it to develop itself by tenderness and consid- 
eration — it — it would be the better for the happiness of all of 
us. Louisa," said Mr. Gradgrind, shading his face with his hand, 
"has always been my favourite child." 

The blustrous Bounderby crimsoned and swelled to such an 
extent on hearing these words, that he seemed to be, and probably 
was, on the brink of a fit. With his very ears a bright purple 
shot with crimson, he pent up his indignation, however, and said : 



614 HARD TIMES. 

" You'd like to keep her here for a time ? " 

"I — I had intended to recommend, my dear Bounderby, that 
you should allow Louisa to remain here on a visit, and be attended 
by Sissy (I mean of course Cecilia Jupe), who understands her, 
and in whom she trusts." 

"I gather from all this, Tom Gradgrind," said Bounderby, stand- 
ing up with his hands in his pockets, "that you are of opinion 
that there's what people call some incompatibility between Loo 
Bounderby and myself." 

" I fear there is at present a general incompatibility between 
Louisa, and — and — and almost all the relations in which I have 
placed her," was her father's sorrowful reply. 

" Now, look you here, Tom Gradgrind," said Bounderby the 
flushed, confronting him with his legs wide apart, his hands deeper 
in his pockets, and his hair like a hayfield wherein his windy anger 
was boisterous. "You have said your say; I am going to say 
mine. I am a Coketown man. I am Josiah Bounderby of Coke- 
town. I know the bricks of this town, and I know the works of 
this town, and I know the chimneys of this town, and I know the 
smoke of this town, and I know the Hands of this town. I know 
'em all pretty well. They're real. When a man tells me anything 
about imaginative qualities, I always tell that man, whoever he is, 
that I know what he means. He means turtle-soup and venison, 
with a gold spoon, and that he wants to be set up with a coach and 
six. That's what your daughter wants. Since you are of opinion 
that she ought to have what she wants, I recommend you to pro- 
vide it for her. Because, Tom Gradgrind, she will never have it 
from me." 

"Bounderby," said Mr. Gradgrind, "I hoped, after my entreaty, 
you would have taken a different tone." 

"Just wait a bit," retorted Bounderby, "you have said your 
say, I believe. I heard you out ; hear me out, if you please. 
Don't make yourself a spectacle of unfairness as well as inconsist- 
ency, because, although I am sorry to see Tom Gradgrind reduced 
to his present position, I should be doubly sorry to see him brought 
so low as that. Now, there's an incompatibility of some sort or 
another, I am given to understand by you, between your daughter 
and me. I'll give you to understand, in reply to that, that there 
unquestionably is an incompatibility of the first magnitude — to be 
summed up in this — that your daughter don't properly know her 
husband's merits, and is not impressed with such a sense as would 
become her, by George ! of the honour of his alliance. That's plain 
speaking, I hope." 

"Bounderby," urged Mr. Gradgrind, "this is unreasonable." 

" Is it ? " said Bounderby. " I am glad to hear you say so. 



HAED TIMES. 615 

Because when Tom Gradgrind with his new lights, tells me that 
what I say is unreasonable, I am convinced at once it must be 
devilish sensible. With your permission I am going on. You 
know my origin ; and you know that for a good many years of my 
life I didn't want a shoeing-horn, in consequence of not having a 
shoe. Yet you may believe or not, as you think proper, that there 
are ladies — born ladies — belonging to families — Families! — 
who next to w^orship the ground I walk on." 

He discharged this like a Rocket, at his father-in-law's head. 

''Whereas your daughter," proceeded Bounderby, "is far from 
being a born lady. That you know, yourself. Not that I care a 
pinch of candle-snuff about such things, for you are very well aware 
I don't ; but that such is the fact, and you, Tom Gradgrind, can't 
change it. Why do I say this ? " 

"Not, I fear," observed Mr. Gradgrind, in a low voice, "to 
spare me." 

"Hear me out," said Bounderby, "and refrain from cutting in 
till your turn comes round. I say this, because highly connected 
females have been astonished to see the way in which your daughter 
has conducted herself, and to witness her insensibility. They have 
wondered how I have suffered it. And I wonder myself now, 
and I won't suffer it." 

"Bounderby," returned Mr. Gradgrind, rising, "the less we say 
to-night the better, I think." 

" On the contrary, Tom Gradgrind, the more we say to-night, 
the better, I think. That is," the consideration checked him, "till 
I have said all I mean to say, and then I don't care how soon we 
stop. I come to a question that may shorten the business. What 
do you mean by the proposal you made just now ? " 

"What do I mean, Bounderby ? " 

" By your visiting proposition," said Bounderby, with an inflexi- 
ble jerk of the hayfield. 

" I mean that I hope you may be induced to arrange in a friendly 
manner, for allowing Louisa a period of repose and reflection here, 
which may tend to a gradual alteration for the better in many 
respects." 

" To a softening down of your ideas of the incompatibility?" 
said Bounderby. 

" If you put it in those terms." 

"What made you think of tliis?" said Bounderby. 

"I have already said, I fear Louisa has not been understood. Is 
it asking too much, Bounderby, that you, so far her elder, should 
aid in trying to set her right 1 You have accepted a great charge 
of her ; for better for worse, for — " 

Mr. Bounderby may have been annoyed by the repetition of his 



616 HARD TIMES. 

own words to Stephen Blackpool, but he cut the quotation short 
with an angry start. 

"Come!" said he, "I don't want to be told about that. I 
know what I took her for, as well as you do. Never you mind 
what I took her for ; that's my look-out." 

" I was merely going on to remark, Bounderby, that we may all be 
more or less in the wrong, not even excepting you ; and that some 
yielding on your part, remembering the trust you have accepted, 
may not only be an act of true kindness, but perhaps a debt incurred 
towards Louisa." 

"I think differently," blustered Bounderby. "I am going to 
finish this business according to my own opinions. Now, I don't 
want to make a quarrel of it with you, Tom Gradgrind. To tell 
you the truth, I don't think it would be worthy of my reputation 
to quarrel on such a subject. As to your gentleman friend, he may 
take himself off, wherever he hkes best. If he falls in my way, I 
shall tell him my mind ; if he don't fall in my way, I shan't, for it 
won't be worth my while to do it. As to your daughter, whom I 
made Loo Bounderby, and might have done better by leaving Loo 
Gradgrind, if she don't come home to-morrow, by twelve o'clock at 
noon, I shall understand that she prefers to stay away, and I shall 
send her wearing apparel and so forth over here, and you'll take 
charge of her for the future. What I shall say to people in general, 
of the incompatibility that led to my so laying down the law, will 
be this. I am Josiah Bounderby, and I had my bringing up : she's 
the daughter of Tom Gradgrind, and she had her bringing up ; and 
the two horses wouldn't pull together. I am pretty well known 
to be rather an uncommon man, I believe ; and most people will 
understand fast enough that it must be a woman rather out of the 
common, also, who, in the long nm, would come up to my mark." 

"Let me seriously entreat you to reconsider this, Bounderby," 
urged Mr. Gradgrind, " before you commit yourself to such a 
decision." 

"I always come to a decision," said Bounderby, tossing his hat 
on : " and whatever I do, I do at once. I should be surprised at 
Tom Gradgrind's addressing such a remark to Josiah Bounderby of 
Coketown, knowing what he knows of him, if I could be surprised 
by anything Tom Gradgrind did, after his making himself a party 
to sentimental humbug. I have given you my decision, and I have 
got no more to say. Good night ! " 

So Mr. Bounderby went home to his town house to bed. At 
five minutes past twelve o'clock next day, he directed Mrs. Boun- 
derby's property to be carefully packed up and sent to Tom Grad- 
grind's ; advertised his country retreat for sale by private contract ; 
and resumed a bachelor life. 



HARD TIMES. 617 

CHAPTER IV. 

LOST. 

The robbery at the Bank had not languished before, and did not 
cease to occupy a front place in the attention of the principal of 
that establishment now. In boastful proof of his promptitude and 
activity, as a remarkable man, and a self-made man, and a commer- 
cial wonder more admirable than Venus, who had risen out of the 
mud instead of the sea, he hked to show how little his domestic 
affairs abated his business ardour. Consequently, in the first few 
weeks of his resumed bachelorhood, he even advanced upon his usual 
display of bustle, and every day made such a route in renewing his 
investigations into the robbery, that the officers who had it in hand 
almost mshed it had never been committed. 

They were at fault too, and off the scent. Although they had 
been so quiet since the first outbreak of the matter, that most 
people really did suppose it to have been abandoned as hopeless, 
nothing new occurred. No implicated man or woman took untimely 
courage, or made a self-betraying step. More remarkable yet, 
Stephen Blackpool could not be heard of, and the mysterious old 
woman remained a mystery. 

Things having come to this pass, and showing no latent signs of 
stirring beyond it, the upshot of Mr. Bounderby's investigations 
was, that he resolved to hazard a bold burst. He drew up a 
placard, offering Twenty Pounds reward for the apprehension of 
Stephen Blackpool, suspected of complicity in the robbery of the 
Coketown Bank on such a night; he described the said Stephen 
Blackpool by dress, complexion, estimated height, and manner, as 
minutely as he could; he recited how he had left the town, and in 
what direction he had been last seen going ; he had the whole 
printed in great black letters on a staring broadsheet; and he 
caused the walls to be posted with it in the dead of night, so that 
it should strike upon the sight of the whole population at one 
blow. 

The factory-bells had need to ring their loudest that morning to 
disperse the group of workers who stood in the tardy daybreak, col- 
lected round the placards, devouring them with eager eyes. Not 
the least eager of the eyes assembled, were the eyes of those who 
could not read. These people, as they listened to the friendly voice 
that read aloud — there was always some such ready to help them 
— stared at the characters which meant so much -vvith a vague awe 
and respect that would have been half ludicrous, if any aspect of 
public ignorance could ever be otherwise than threatening and fuU 



618 HARD TIMES. 

of evil. Many ears and eyes were busy with a vision of the 
matter of these placards, among turning spindles, rattling looms, 
and whirring wheels, for hours afterwards ; and when the Hands 
cleared out again into the streets, there were still as many readers 
as before. 

Slackbridge, the delegate, had to address his audience too that 
night ; and Slackbridge had obtained a clean bill from the printer, 
and had brought it in his pocket. my friends and fellow 
countrymen, the down-trodden operatives of Coketown, oh my 
fellow brothers and fellow workmen and fellow citizens and fellow 
men, what a to-do was there, when Slackbridge unfolded what he 
called "that damning document," and held it up to the gaze, and 
for the execration of the working-man community ! " Oh my 
fellow men, behold of what a traitor in the camp of those great 
spirits who are enrolled upon the holy scroll of Justice and of 
Union, is appropriately capable ! Oh my prostrate friends, with 
the galling yoke of tyrants on your necks and the iron foot of 
despotism treading down your fallen forms into the dust of the 
earth, upon which right glad would your oppressors be to see you 
creeping on your bellies all the days of your lives, like the serpent 
in the garden — oh my brothers, and shall I as a man not add, my 
sisters too, what do you say, now^ of Stephen Blackpool, with a 
slight stoop in his shoulders and about five foot seven in height, as 
set forth in this degrading and disgusting document, this blighting 
bill, this pernicious placard, this abominable advertisement ; and with 
what majesty of denouncement will you crush the viper, who would 
bring this stain and shame upon the God-like race that happily 
has cast him out for ever ! Yes, my compatriots, happily cast 
him out and sent him forth ! For you remember how he stood 
here before you on this platform ; you remember how, face to face 
and foot to foot, I pursued him through all his intricate windings ; 
you remember how he sneaked and slunk, and sidled, and splitted 
of straws, until, with not an inch of ground to which to cling, I 
hurled him out from amongst us : an object for the undying finger 
of scorn to point at, and for the avenging fire of every free and 
thinking mind to scorch and sear ! And now my friends — my 
labouring friends, for I rejoice and triumph in that stigma — my 
friends whose hard but honest beds are made in toil, and whose 
scanty but independent pots are boiled in hardship ; and, now I 
say, my friends, what appellation has that dastard craven taken 
to himself, when, with the mask torn from his features, he 
stands before us in all his native deformity, a What ? A thief ! 
A plunderer ! A proscribed fugitive, with a price upon his head ; 
a fester and a wound upon the noble character of the Coketown 



HARD TIMES. 619 

operative ! Therefore, my band of brothers in a sacred bond, to 
which your children and your children's children yet unborn 
have set their infant hands and seals, I propose to you on the part 
of the United Aggregate Tribunal, ever watchful for your welfare, 
ever zealous for your benefit, that this meeting does Resolve : 
That Stephen Blackpool, weaver, referred to in this placard, 
having been already solemnly disowned by the community of Coke- 
town Hands, the same are free from the shame of his misdeeds,' 
and cannot as a class be reproached with his dishonest actions ! " 

Thus Slackbridge ; gnashing and perspiring after a prodigious 
sort. A few stern voices called out " No ! " and a score or two 
hailed, with assenting cries of " Hear, hear ! " the caution from 
one man, " Slackbridge, y' or over better int ; y' or a goen too 
fast ! " But these were pigmies against an army ; the general 
assemblage subscribed to the gospel according to Slackbridge, 
and gave three cheers for him, as he sat demonstratively panting 
at them. 

These men and women were yet in the streets, passing quietly 
to their homes, when Sissy, who had been called away from Louisa 
some minutes before, returned. 

" Who is it ? " asked Louisa. 

"It is Mr. Bounderby," said Sissy, timid of the name, "and 
your brother Mr. Tom, and a young woman who says her name 
is Rachael, and that you know her." 

"What do they want. Sissy dear*?" 

" They want to see you. Rachael has been crying, and seems 
angry." 

" Father," said Louisa, for he was present, " I cannot refuse to 
see them, for a reason that will explain itself. Shall they come 
in here ? " 

As he answered in the affirmative. Sissy went away to bring 
them. She reappeared with them directly. Tom was last ; and 
remained standing in the obscurest part of the room, near the 
door. 

" Mrs. Bounderby," said her husband, entering with a cool nod, 
" I don't disturb you, I hope. This is an unseasonable hour, but 
here is a young woman who has been making statements which 
render my visit necessary. Tom Gradgrind, as your son, young 
Tom, refuses for some obstinate reason or other to say anything at 
all about those statements, good or bad, I am obliged to confront 
her with your daughter." 

"You have seen me once before, young lady," said Rachael, 
standing in front of Louisa. 

Tom coughed. 



HARD TIMES. 621 

"You have seen me, young lady,*' repeated Rachael, as she did 
not answer, " once before." 

Tom coughed again. 

" I have." 

Rachael cast her eyes proudly towards Mr. Bounderby, and said, 
"Will you make it known, young lady, w^here, and who was 
there?" 

" I went to the house where Stephen Blackpool lodged, on the 
night of his discharge from his work, and I saw you there. He 
was there too ; and an old woman who did not speak, and whom 
I could scarcely see, stood in a dark corner. My brother was 
with me." 

" Why couldn't you say so, young Tom ? " demanded Bounderby. 

"I promised my sister I wouldn't." Which Louisa hastily 
confirmed. " And besides," said the whelp bitterly, " she tells 
her own story so precious well — and so full — that what business 
had I to take it out of her mouth ! " 

"Say, young lady, if you please," pursued Rachael, "why in an 
evil hour, you ever came to Stephen's that night." 

"I felt compassion for him," said Louisa, her coloiu: deepening, 
" and I wished to know what he was going to do, and wished to 
offer him assistance." 

"Thank you, ma'am," said Bounderby. "Much flattered and 
obliged." 

"Did you offer him," asked Rachael, " a bank-note 1 " 

"Yes; but he refused it, and would only take two pounds in 
gold." 

Rachael cast her eyes towards Mr. Bounderby again. 

" Oh certainly ! " said Bounderby. " If you put the question 
whether your ridiculous and improbable account w^as true or not, I 
am bound to say it's confirmed." 

"Young lady," said Rachael, "Stephen Blackpool is now named 
as a thief in public print all over this town, and where else ! 
There have been a meeting to-night where he have been spoken of 
in the same shameful way. Stephen ! The honestest lad, the 
truest lad, the best ! " Her indignation failed her, and she broke 
off sobbing. 

"I am very, very sorry," said Louisa. 

"0 young lady, young lady," returned Rachael, "I hope you 
may be, but I don't know ! I can't say what you may ha' done ! 
The like of you don't know us, don't care for us, don't belong to 
us. I am not sure why you may ha' come that night. I can't 
tell but what you may ha' come wi' some aim of your own, not 
mindin to what trouble you brought such as the poor lad. I said 



622 HARD TIMES. 

then, Bless you for coming ; and I said it of my heart, you seemed 
to take so pitifully to him ; but I don't know now, I don't know ! " 

Louisa could not reproach her for her unjust suspicions ; she 
was so faithful to her idea of the man, and so afflicted. 

"And when I think," said Rachael through her sobs, "that the 
poor lad was so grateful, thinkin you so good to him — when I 
mind that he put his hand over his hard-worken face to hide the 
tears that you brought up there — 0, I hope you may be sorry, 
and ha' no bad cause to be it ; but I don't know, I don't know ! " 

"You"re a pretty article," growled the whelp, moving uneasily 
in his dark corner, " to come here with these precious imputations ! 
You ought to be bundled out for not kno\\dng how to behave your- 
self, and you would be by rights." 

She said nothing in reply ; and her low weeping was the only 
sound that was heard, until Mr. Bounderby spoke. 

"Come!" said he, "you know what you have engaged to do. 
You had better give your mind to that; not this." 

"'Deed, I am loath," returned Rachael, drying her eyes, "that any 
here should see me like this ; but I won't be seen so again. Young 
lady, when I had read what's put in print of Stephen — and what 
had just as much truth in it as if it had been put in print of you 
— I went straight to the Bank to say I knew where Stephen was, 
and to give a sure and certain promise that he should be here in 
two days. I couldn't meet wi' Mr. Bounderby then, and your 
brother sent me away, and I tried to find you, but you was not to 
be found, and I went back to work. Soon as I come out of the Mill 
to-night, I hastened to hear what was said of Stephen — for I 
know wi' pride he will come back to shame it ! — and then I went 
again to seek Mr. Bounderby, and I found him, and I told him 
every word I knew ; and he believed no word I said, and brought 
me here." 

" So far, that's true enough," assented Mr. Bounderby, with his 
hands in his pockets and his hat on. "But I have known you 
people before to-day, you'll observe, and I know you never die for 
want of talking. Now, I recommend you not so much to mind 
talking just now, as doing. You have undertaken to do something; 
all I remark upon that at present is, do it ! " 

" I have written to Stephen by the post that went out this after- 
noon, as I have written to him once before sin' he went away," 
said Rachael ; "and he ^vill be here, at furthest, in two days." 

" Then, I'll tell you something. You are not aware perhaps," 
retorted Mr. Bounderby, "that you yourself have been looked 
after now and then, not being considered quite free from suspicion 
in this business, on account of most people being judged according 



HARD TIMES. 623 

to the company they keep. The post-office hasn't been forgotten 
either. What I'll tell you is, that no letter to Stephen Blackpool 
has ever got into it. Therefore, what has become of yours, I leave 
you to guess. Perhaps you're mistaken, and never wrote any." 

"He hadn't been gone from here, young lady," said Rachael, 
turning appealingly to Louisa, "as much as a week, when he sent 
me the only letter I have had from him, saying that he was forced 
to seek work in another name." 

" Oh, by George ! " cried Bounderby, shaking his head, with a 
whistle, " he changes his name, does he ! That's rather unlucky, 
too, for such an immaculate chap. It's considered a little suspi- 
cious in Courts of Justice, I believe, when an Innocent happens to 
have many names." 

"What," said Rachael, with the tears in her eyes again, "what, 
young lady, in the name of Mercy, was left the poor lad to do ! 
The masters against him on one hand, the men against him on the 
other, he only wantin to work hard in peace, and do what he felt 
right. Can a man have no soul of his own, no mind of his own ? 
Must he go wrong all through wi' this side, or must he go wrong 
all through wi' that, or else be hunted like a hare 1 " 

" Indeed, indeed, I pity him from my heart," returned Louisa ; 
"and I hope that he will clear himself." 

" You need have no fear of that, young lady. He is sure ! " 

"All the surer, I suppose," said Mr. Bounderby, "for your refus- 
ing to tell where he is ? Eh ? " 

"He shall not, through any act of mine, come back wi' the 
unmerited reproach of being brought back. He shall come back 
of his own accord to clear himself, and put all those that have 
injured his good character, and he not here for its defence, to 
shame. I have told him what has been done against him," said 
Rachael, throwing off all distrust as a rock throws off the sea, 
"and he will be here, at furthest, in two days." 

" Notwithstanding which," added Mr. Bounderby, " if he can be 
laid hold of any sooner, he shall have an earlier opportunity of clear- 
ing himself. As to you, I have nothing against you ; what you 
came and told me turns out to be true, and I have given you the 
means of proving it to be true, and there's an end of it. I wish 
you good night all ! I must be off to look a little further into 
this." 

Tom came out of his corner when Mr. Bounderby moved, moved 
with him, kept close to him, and went -away with him. The only 
parting salutation of which he delivered himself was a sulky " Good 
night, father ! " With a brief speech, and a scowl at his sister, he 
left the house. 



624 HARD TIMES. 

Since his sheet-anchor had come home, Mr. Gradgrind had been 
sparing of speech. He still sat silent, when Louisa mildly said : 

" Rachael, you will not distrust me one day, when you know me 
better." 

" It goes against me," Rachael answered, in a gentler manner, 
" to mistrust any one ; but when I am so mistrusted — when we 
all are — I cannot keep such things quite out of my mind. I ask 
your pardon for having done you an injury. I don't think what I 
said now. Yet I might come to think it again, wi' the poor lad so 
wronged." 

"Did you tell him in your letter," inquired Sissy, "that suspi- 
cion seemed to have fallen upon him, because he had been seen 
about the Bank at night 1 He would then know what he would 
have to explain on coming back, and would be ready." 

"Yes, dear," she returned; "but I can't guess what can have 
ever taken him there. He never used to go there. It was never 
in his way. His way was the same as mine, and not near it." 

Sissy had already been at her side asking her where she lived, 
and whether she might come to-morrow night, to inquue if there 
were news of him. 

"I doubt," said Rachael, "if he can be here till next day." 

" Then I will come next night too," said Sissy. 

When Rachael, assenting to this, was gone, Mr. G-radgrind lifted 
up his head, and said to his daughter : 

" Louisa, my dear, I have never, that I know of, seen this man. 
Do you believe him to be implicated 1 " 

" I think I have believed it, father, though with great difficulty. 
I do not believe it now." 

" That is to say, you once persuaded yourself to believe it, from 
knowing him to be suspected. His appearance and manner ; are 
they so honest 1 " 

"Very honest." 

"And her confidence not be taken shaken ! I ask myself," said 
Mr. Gradgrind, musing, " does the real culprit know of these accu- 
sations ? Where is he ? Who is he 1 " 

His hair had latterly began to change its colour. As he leaned 
upon his hand again, looking grey and old, Louisa, with a face of 
fear and pity, hurriedly went over to him, and sat close at his side. 
Her eyes by accident met Sissy's at the moment. Sissy flushed 
and started, and Louisa put her finger on her lip. 

Next night, when Sissy returned home and told Louisa that 
Stephen was not come, she told it in a whisper, Next night again, 
when she came home with the same account, and added that he 
had not been heard of, she spoke in the same low frightened tone. 



HAED TIMES. 625 

From the moment of that interchange of looks, they never uttered 
his name, or any reference to him, aloud ; nor ever pursued the sub- 
ject of the robbery, when Mr. Gradgrind spoke of it. 

The two appointed days ran out, three days and nights ran out, 
and Stephen Blackpool was not come, and remained unheard of. 
On the fourth day, Rachael, with unabated confidence, but con- 
sidering her despatch to have miscarried, went up to the Bank, and 
showed her letter from him with his address, at a working colony, 
one of many, not upon the main road, sixty miles away. Messen- 
gers were sent to that place, and the whole town looked for Stephen 
to be brought in next day. 

During this whole time the whelp moved about with Mr. Boun- 
derby like his shadow, assisting in all the proceedings. He was 
greatly excited, horribly fevered, bit his nails down to the quick, 
spoke in a hard rattling voice, and with lips that were black and 
burnt up. At the hour when the suspected man was looked for, 
the whelp was at the station ; offering to wager that he had made 
off before the arrival of those who were sent in quest of him, and 
that he would not appear. 

The whelp was right. The messengers returned alone. Ra- 
chael's letter had gone, Rachael's letter had been delivered, Stephen 
Blackpool had decamped in that same hour; and no soul knew 
more of him. The only doubt in Coketown was, whether Rachael 
had written in good faith, believing that he really would come back, 
or warning him to fly. On this point opinion was divided. 

Six days, seven days, far on into another week. The wretched 
whelp plucked up a ghastly courage, and began to grow defiant. 
"TFas the suspected fellow the thief? A pretty question! If 
not, where was the man, and why did he not come back ? " 

Where was the man, and why did he not come back ? In the 
dead of night the echoes of his own words, which had rolled Heaven 
knows how far away in the daytime, came back instead, and abided 
by him until morning. 



CHAPTER V. 

FOUND. 

Day and night again, day and night again. No Stephen Black- 
pool. Where was the man, and why did he not come back 1 

Every night, Sissy went to Rachael's lodging, and sat with her 
in her small neat room. All day, Rachael toiled as such people 
must toil, whatever their anxieties. The smoke-serpents were indif- 
ferent who was lost or found, who turned out bad or good ; the 



626 HARD TIMES. 

melancholy mad elephants, like the Hard Fact men, abated noth- 
ing of their set routine, whatever happened. Day and night 
again, day and night again. The monotony was unbroken. Even 
Stephen Blackpool's disappearance was falling into the general 
way, and becoming as monotonous a wonder as any piece of ma- 
chinery in Coketo^vn. 

" I misdoubt," said Rachael, " if there is as many as twenty left 
in all this place, who have any trust in the poor dear lad now." 

She said it to Sissy, as they sat in her lodging, lighted only by 
the lamp at the street corner. Sissy had come there when it was 
already dark, to wait her return from work ; and they had since 
sat at the window where Rachael had found her, wanting no 
brighter light to shine on their sorrowful talk. 

" If it hadn't been mercifully brought about, that I was to have 
you to speak to," pursued Rachael, "times are, when I think my 
mind would not have kept right. But I get hope and strength 
through you ; and you believe that though appearances may rise 
against him, he will be proved clear 1 " 

"I do believe so," returned Sissy, "with my whole heart. I 
feel so certain, Rachael, that the confidence you hold in yours 
against all discouragement, is not like to be wrong, that I have no 
more doubt of him than if I had known him through as many 
years of trial as you have." 

"And I, my dear," said Rachael, with a tremble in her voice, 
" have known him through them all, to be, according to his quiet 
ways, so faithful to everything honest and good, that if he was 
never to be heard of more, and I was to live to be a hundred years 
old, I could say with my last breath, God knows my heart. I 
have never once left trusting Stephen Blackpool ! " 

" We all believe, up at the Lodge, Rachael, that he wiU be freed 
from suspicion, sooner or later." 

"The better I know it to be so believed there, my dear," said 
Rachael, " and the kinder I feel it that you come away from there, 
purposely to comfort me, and keep me company, and be seen wi' 
me when I am not yet free from all suspicion myself, the more 
grieved I am that I shoidd ever have spoken those mistrusting 
words to the young lady. And yet — " 

" You don't mistrust her now, Rachael ? " 

"Now that you have brought us more together, no. But I 
can't at all times keep out of my mind — " 

Her voice so sunk into a low and slow communing with herself, 
that Sissy, sitting by her side, was obliged to listen with attention. 

" I can't at all times keep out of my mind, mistrustings of some 
one. I can't think who 'tis, I can't think how or why it may be 



HARD TIMES. 627 

done, but I mistrust that some one has put Stephen out of the 
way. I mistrust that by his coming back of his own accord, and 
showing himself innocent before them all, some one would be con- 
founded, who — to prevent that — has stopped him, and put him 
out of the way." 

" That is a dreadful thought," said Sissy, turning pale. 

" It is a dreadful thought to think he may be murdered." 

Sissy shuddered, and turned paler yet. 

" When it makes its way into my mind, dear," said Rachael, 
" and it will come sometimes, though I do all I can to keep it out, 
wi' counting on to high numbers as I work, and saying over and 
over again pieces that I knew when I were a child — I fall into 
such a wild, hot hurry, that, however tired I am, I want to walk 
fast, miles and miles. I must get the better of this before bed- 
time. I'll walk home wi' you." 

"He might fall ill upon the journey back," said Sissy, faintly 
offering a worn-out scrap of hope ; " and in such a case, there are 
many places on the road where he might stop." 

" But he is in none of them. He has been sought for in all, and 
he's not there." 

" True," was Sissy's reluctant admission. 

" He'd walk the journey in two days. If he was footsore and 
couldn't walk, I sent him, in the letter he got, the money to ride, 
lest he should have none of his own to spare." 

"Let us hope that to-morrow will bring something better, 
Rachael. Come into the air ! " 

Her gentle hand adjusted Rachael's shawl upon her shining black 
hair in the usual manner of her wearing it, and they went out. 
The night being fine, little knots of Hands were here and there 
lingering at street corners ; but it was supper-time with the greater 
part of them, and there were but few people in the streets. 

" You're not so hurried now, Rachael, and your hand is cooler." 

" I get better, dear, if I can only walk, and breathe a little fresh. 
Times when I can't, I turn weak and confused." 

"But you must not begin to fail, Rachael, for you may be wanted 
at any time to stand by Stephen. To-morrow is Saturday. If no 
news comes to-morrow, let us walk in the country on Sunday morn- 
ing, and strengthen you for another week. Will you go ? " 

"Yes, dear." 

They were by this time in the street where Mr. Bounderby's 
house stood. The way to Sissy's destination led them past the 
door, and they were going straight towards it. Some train had 
newly arrived in Coketown, which had put a number of vehicles in 
motion, and scattered a considerable bustle about the town. Sev- 



628 HARD TIMES. 

eral coaches were rattling before them and behind them as they 
approached Mr. Bounderby's, and one of the latter drew up with 
such briskness as they were in the act of passing the house, that 
they looked round involuntarily. The bright gaslight over Mr. 
Bounderby's steps showed them Mrs. Sparsit in the coach, in an 
ecstasy of excitement, struggling to open the door ; Mrs. Sparsit 
seeing them at the same moment, called to them to stop. 

"It's a coincidence," exclaimed Mrs. Sparsit, as she was released 
by the coachman. " It's a Providence ! Come out, ma'am ! " then 
said Mrs. Sparsit, to some one inside, " come out, or we'U have you 
dragged out ! " 

Hereupon, no other than the mysterious old woman descended. 
Whom Mrs. Sparsit incontinently collared. 

"Leave her alone, everybody!" cried Mrs. Sparsit, with great 
energy. " Let nobody touch her. She belongs to me. Come in, 
ma'am ! " then said Mrs. Sparsit, reversing her former word of com- 
mand. " Come in, ma'am, or we'll have you dragged in ! " 

The spectacle of a matron of classical deportment, seizing an 
ancient woman by the throat, and haling her into a dwelling-house, 
would have been, under any circumstances, sufficient temptation to 
all 'true English stragglers so blest as to witness it, to force a way 
into that dwelling-house and see the matter out. But when the 
phenomenon was enhanced by the notoriety and mystery by this 
time associated all over the town, with the Bank robbery, it would 
have lured the stragglers in, with an irresistible attraction, though 
the roof had been expected to fall upon their heads. Accordingly, 
the chance witnesses on the ground, consisting of the busiest of the 
neighbours to the number of some five-and-twenty, closed in after 
Sissy and Rachael, as they closed in after Mrs. Sparsit and her 
prize ; and the whole body made a disorderly irruption into Mr. 
Bounderby's dining-room, where the people behind lost not a 
moment's time in mounting on the chairs, to get the better of the 
people in front, 

" Fetch Mr. Bounderby down ! " cried Mrs. Sparsit. " Rachael, 
young woman ; you know who this is ? " 

" It's Mrs. Pegler," said Rachael. 

" I should think it is ! " cried Mrs. Sparsit, exulting. " Fetch 
Mr. Bounderby, Stand away, everybody ! " Here old Mrs. Pegler, 
muffling herself up, and shrinking from observation, whispered a 
word of entreaty. "Don't tell me," said Mrs. Sparsit, aloud, "I 
have told you twenty times, coming along, that I will not leave 
you tiU I have handed you over to him myself." 

Mr, Bounderby now appeared, accompanied by Mr. Gradgrind 
and the whelp, with whom he had been holding conference upstairs. 



HARD TIMES. 629 

Mr. Bounderby looked more astonished than hospitable, at sight of 
this uninvited party in his dining-room. 

" Why, what's the matter now ! " said he. " Mrs. Sparsit, 
ma'am 1 " 

"Sir," explained that worthy woman, "I trust it is my good 
fortune to produce a person you have much desired to find. Stimu- 
lated by my wish to relieve your mind, sir, and connecting together 
such imperfect clues to the part of the country in which that per- 
son might be supposed to reside, as have been afforded by the 
young woman, Rachael, fortunately now present to identify, I have 
had the happiness to succeed, and to bring that person with me — 
I need not say most unwillingly on her part. It has not been, sir, 
without some trouble that I have effected this ; but trouble in your 
service is to me a pleasure, and hunger, thirst, and cold a real 
gratification." 

Here Mrs. Sparsit ceased ; for Mr. Bounderby's visage ex- 
hibited an extraordinary combination of all possible colours and 
expressions of discomfiture, as old Mrs. Pegler was disclosed to 
his view. 

" Why, what do you mean by this 1 " was his highly unexpected 
demand, in great warmth. " I ask you, what do you mean by this, 
Mrs. Sparsit, ma'am?" 

" Sir ! " exclaimed Mrs, Sparsit, faintly. 

" Why don't you mind your own business, ma'am ? " roared Boun- 
derby. " How dare you go and poke your oflQcious nose into my 
family affairs'?" 

This allusion to her favourite feature overpowered Mrs. Sparsit. 
She sat down stiffly in a chair, as if she were frozen ; and with a 
fixed stare at Mr. Bounderby, slowly grated her mittens against one 
another, as if they were frozen too. 

" My dear Josiah ! " cried Mrs. Pegler, trembling. " My darling 
boy ! I am not to blame. It's not my fault, Josiah. I told this 
lady over and over again, that I knew she was doing what would 
not be agreeable to you, but she would do it." 

" What did you let her bring you for ? Couldn't you knock her 
cap off, or her tooth out, or scratch her, or do something or other 
to her ? " asked Bounderby. 

" My own boy ! She threatened me that if I resisted her, I 
should be brought by constables, and it was better to come quietly 
than make that stir in such a — " Mrs. Pegler glanced timidly but 
proudly round the walls — " such a fine house as this. Indeed, 
indeed, it is not my fault ! My dear, noble, stately boy ! I have 
always lived quiet and secret, Josiah, my dear. I have never 
broken the condition once. I have never said I was your mother. 



630 HARD TIMES. 

I have admired you at a distance ; and if I have come to town 
sometimes, with long times between, to take a proud peep at you, 
I have done it unbeknown, my love, and gone away again." 

Mr. Bounderby, with his hands in his pockets, walked in impa- 
tient mortification up and down at the side of the long dining-table, 
while the spectators greedily took in every syllable of Mrs. Pegler's 
appeal, and at each succeeding syllable became more and more 
round-eyed. Mr. Bounderby still walking up and down when Mrs. 
Pegler had done, Mr. Gradgrind addressed that maligned old lady : 

"I am surprised, ma'am," he observed with severity, "that in 
your old age you have the face to claim Mr. Bounderby for your 
son, after your unnatural and inhuman treatment of him." 

"il/e unnatural ! " cried poor old Mrs. Pegler. " J/e inhuman ! 
To my dear boy ? " 

" Dear ! " repeated Mr. Gradgrind. " Yes ; dear in his self-made 
prosperity, madam, I dare say. Not very dear, however, when 
you deserted him in his infancy, and left him to the brutality of a 
drunken grandmother." 

" / deserted my Josiah ! " cried Mrs. Pegler, clasping her hands. 
" Now, Lord forgive you, sir, for your wicked imaginations, and for 
your scandal against the memory of my poor mother, who died in 
my arms before Josiah was born. May you repent of it, sir, and 
live to know better ! " 

She was so very earnest and injured, that Mr. Gradgrind, shocked 
by the possibility which dawned upon him, said in a gentler tone : 

" Do you deny, then, madam, that you left your son to — to be 
brought up in the gutter 1 " 

" Josiah in the gutter ! " exclaimed Mrs. Pegler. " No such a 
thing, sir. Never ! For shame on you ! My dear boy knows, and 
will give 7/ou to know, that though he come of humble parents, he 
come of parents that loved him as dear as the best could, and never 
thought it hardship on themselves to pinch a bit that he might 
write and cipher beautiful, and I've his books at home to show it ! 
Aye, have I ! " said Mrs. Pegler, with indignant pride. "And my 
dear boy knows, and will give 7/ou to know, sir, that after his 
beloved father died, when he was eight years old, his mother, too, 
could pinch a bit, as it was her duty and her pleasure and her 
pride to do it, to help him out in life, and put him 'prentice. And 
a steady lad he was, and a kind master he had to lend him a hand, 
and well he worked his own way forward to be rich and thriving. 
And Til give you to know, sir — for this my dear boy won't — 
that though his mother kept but a little village shop, he never 
forgot her, but pensioned me on thirty pound a year — more than 
I want, for I put by out of it — only making the condition that I 



HARD TIMES. 631 

was to keep down in my own part, and make no boast about him, and 
not trouble him. And I never have, except with looking at him 
once a year, when he has never knowed it. And it's right," said 
poor old Mrs. Pegler, in affectionate championship, ''that I should 
keep do^vn in my own pait, and I have no doubts that if I was 
here I should do a many unbefitting things, and I am well contented, 
and I can keep my pride in my Josiah to myself, and I can love 
for love's own sake 1 And I am ashamed of you, sir," said Mrs. Peg- 
ler, lastly, " for your slanders and suspicions. And I never stood 
here before, nor never wanted to stand here when my dear son said 
no. And I shouldn't be here now, if it hadn't been for being 
brought here. And for shame upon you, for shame, to accuse 
me of being a bad mother to my son, with my son standing here to 
tell you so different ! " 

The bystanders, on and off the dining-room chairs, raised a mur- 
mur of sympathy with Mrs, Pegler, and Mr. Gradgriud felt him- 
self innocently placed in a very distressing predicament, when Mr. 
Bounderby, who had never ceased walking up and down, and had 
every moment swelled larger and larger, and grown redder and 
redder, stopped short. 

" I don't exactly know," said Mr. Bounderby, " how I come to 
be favoured with the attendance of the present company, but I don't 
inquire. "When they're quite satisfied, perhaps they'll be so good as 
to disperse ; whether they're satisfied or not, perhaps they'll be so 
good as to disperse. I'm not bound to dehver a lecture on my 
family affau's, I have not undertaken to do it, and I'm not a going 
to do it. Therefore those who expect any explanation whatever 
upon that branch of the subject, will be disappointed — particularly 
Tom Gradgrind, and he can't know it too soon. In reference to the 
Bank robbery, there has been a mistake made, concerning my 
mother. If there hadn't been over-officiousness it wouldn't have 
been made, and I hate over-officiousness at all times, whether or no. 
Good evening I " 

Although Mr. Boimderby carried it off in these terms, holding 
the door open for the company to depart, there was a blustering 
sheepishness upon him, at once extremely crestfallen and superla- 
tively absurd. Detected as the Bully of humility, who had built 
his windy reputation upon lies, and in his boastfulness had put the 
honest truth as far away from him as if he had advanced the mean 
claim (there is no meaner) to tack himself on to a pedigree, he cut 
a most ridiculous figure. With the people filing off at the door he 
held, who he knew would carry what had passed to the whole 
town, to be given to the foiu" winds, he could not have looked a 
Bully more shorn and forlorn, if he had had his ears cropped. 



632 HARD TIMES. 

Even that unlucky female, Mrs. Sparsit, fallen from her pinnacle 
of exultation into the Slough of Despond, was not in so bad a 
plight as that remarkable man and self-made Humbug, Josiah 
Bounderby of Coketown. 

Rachael and Sissy, leaving Mrs. Pegler to occupy a bed at her 
son's for that night, walked together to the gate of Stone Lodge 
and there parted. Mr. Gradgrind joined them before they had 
gone very far, and spoke with much interest of Stephen Blackpool ; 
for whom he thought this signal failure of the suspicions against 
Mrs. Pegler was likely to work well. 

As to the whelp; throughout this scene as on aU other late 
occasions, he had stuck close to Bounderby. He seemed to feel 
that as long as Bounderby could make no discovery without his 
knowledge, he was so far safe. He never visited his sister, and 
had only seen her once since she went home : that is to say on the 
night when he still stuck close to Bounderby, as ali'eady related. 

There was one dim unformed fear lingering about his sister's 
mind, to which she never gave utterance, which surrounded the 
graceless and ungrateful boy with a dreadftil mysteiy. The same 
dark possibility had presented itself in the same shapeless guise, this 
very day, to Sissy, when Rachael spoke of some one who woidd be 
confounded by Stephen's return, having put him out of the way. 
Louisa had never spoken of harbouring any suspicion of her brother 
in connection with the robbery, she and Sissy had held no confidence 
on the subject, save in that one interchange of looks when the uncon- 
scious father rested his grey head on his hand ; but it was under- 
stood between them, and they both knew it. This other fear was 
so awfal, that it hovered about each of them like a ghostly shadow ; 
neither daring to think of its being near herself, far less of its being 
near the other. 

And still the forced spirit which the whelp had plucked up, 
throve with him. If Stephen Blackpool was not the thief, let him 
show himself. Why didn't he ? 

Another night. Another day and night. No Stephen Blackpool. 
Where was the man, and why did he not come back? 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE STAELIGHT. 

The Sunday was a bright Sunday in autumn, clear and cool, 
when early in the morning Sissy and Rachael met, to walk in the 
country. 

As Coketown cast ashes not only on its own head but on the 



HARD TIMES. 633 

neighbourhood's too — after the manner of those pious persons who 
do penance for their own sins by putting other people into sackcloth 
— it was customary for those who now and then thirsted for a 
draught of pure air, which is not absolutely the most wicked among 
the vanities of life, to get a few miles away by the railroad, and 
then begin their walk, or their lounge in the fields. Sissy and 
Rachael helped themselves out of the smoke by the usual means, 
and were put down at a station about midway between the town 
and Mr. Bounderby's retreat. 

Though the green landscape was blotted here and there with 
heaps of coal, it was green elsewhere, and there were trees to see, 
and there were larks singing (though it was Sunday), and there 
were pleasant scents in the air, and all was overarched by a bright 
blue sky. In the distance one way, Coketown showed as a black 
mist ; in another distance hills began to rise ; in a third, there was 
a faint change in the light of the horizon where it shone upon 
the far-off sea. Under their feet, the grass was fresh ; beautiful 
shadows of branches flickered upon it, and speckled it ; hedgerows 
were luxuriant ; everything was at peace. Engines at pits' mouths, 
and lean old horses that had worn the circle of their daily labour 
into the ground, were alike quiet ; wheels had ceased for a short 
space to turn ; and the great wheel of earth seemed to revolve 
without the shocks and noises of another time. 

They walked on across the fields and down the shady lanes, 
sometimes getting over a fragment of a fence so rotten that it 
dropped at a touch of the foot, sometimes passing near a wreck of 
bricks and beams overgrown with grass, marking the site of deserted 
works. They followed paths and tracks, however slight. Mounds 
where the grass was rank and high, and where brambles, dock-weed, 
and such-like vegetation, were confusedly heaped together, they 
always avoided ; for dismal stories were told in that country of the 
old pits hidden beneath such indications. 

The sun was high when they sat down to rest. They had seen 
no one, near or distant, for a long time ; and the solitude remained 
unbroken. "It is so still here, Rachael, and the way is so untrod- 
den, that I think we must be the first who have been here all the 
summer." 

As Sissy said it, her eyes were attracted by another of those 
rotten fragments of fence upon the ground. She got up to look at 
it. " And yet I don't know. This has not been broken very long. 
The wood is quite fresh where it gave way. Here are footsteps 
too. — Rachael ! " 

She ran back, and caught her round the neck. Rachael had 
already started up. 



634 HAED TIMES. 

"What is the matter?" 

" I don't know. There is a hat lying in the grass." 

They went forward together. Rachael took it up, shaking from 
head to foot. She broke into a passion of tears and lamentations : 
Stephen Blackpool was written in his own hand on the inside. 

"0 the poor lad, the poor lad ! He has been made away with. 
He is lying murdered here ! " 

" Is there — has the hat any blood upon it ? " Sissy faltered. 

They were afraid to look ; but they did examine it, and found 
no mark of violence, inside or out. It had been lying there some 
days, for rain and dew had stained it, and the mark of its shape 
was on the grass where it had fallen. They looked fearfully about 
them, without moving, but could see nothing more. " Rachael," 
Sissy whispered, " I will go on a little by myself." 

She had unclasped her hand, and was in the act of stepping for- 
ward, when Rachael caught her in both arms with a scream that 
resounded over the wide landscape. Before them, at their very 
feet, was the brink of a black ragged chasm hidden by the thick 
grass. They sprang back, and fell upon their knees, each hiding 
her face upon the other's neck. 

"0, my good Lord! He's down there! Down there!" At 
first this, and her terrific screams, were all that could be got from 
Rachael, by any tears, by any prayers, by any representations, by 
any means. It was impossible to hush her; and it was deadly 
necessary to hold her, or she would have flung herself down the 
shaft. 

" Rachael, dear Rachael, good Rachael, for the love of Heaven, 
not these dreadful cries ! Think of Stephen, think of Stephen, 
think of Stephen ! " 

By an earnest repetition of this entreaty, poured out in all the 
agony of such a moment. Sissy at last brought her to be silent, and 
to look at her with a tearless face of stone. 

" Rachael, Stephen may be living. You wouldn't leave him 
lying maimed at the bottom of this dreadful place, a moment, if 
you could bring help to him 1 " 

" No, no, no ! " 

" Don't stir from here, for his sake I Let me go and listen." 

She shuddered to approach the pit ; but she crept towards it on 
her hands and knees, and called to him as loud as she could call. 
She listened, but no sound replied. She called again and listened ; 
still no answering sound. She did this, twenty, thirty times. She 
took a little clod of earth from the broken ground where he had 
stumbled, and threw it in. She could not hear it fall. 

The wide prospect, so beautiful in its stillness but a few minutes 



HARD TIMES. 635 

ago, almost carried despair to her brave heart, as she rose and 
looked all round her, seeing no help. " Eachael, we must lose not a 
moment. We must go in diflPerent directions, seeking aid. You 
shall go by the Avay we have come, and I will go forward by the 
path. Tell any one you see, and every one what has happened. 
Think of Stephen, think of Stephen ! " 

She knew by Rachael's face that she might trust her now. And 
after standing for a moment to see her running, wringing her hands 
as she ran, she turned and went upon her own search ; she stopped 
at the hedge to tie her shawl there as a guide to the place, then 
threw her bonnet aside, and ran as she had never run before. 

Run, Sissy, run, in Heaven's name ! Don't stop for breath. 
Run, run ! Quickening herself by carrying such entreaties in her 
thoughts, she ran from field to field, and lane to lane, and place to 
place, as she had never run before ; until she came to a shed by an 
engine-house, where two men lay in the shade, asleep on straw. 

First to wake them, and next to tell them, all so wild and 
breathless as she was, what had brought her there, were difiiculties ; 
but they no sooner understood her than their spirits were on fire 
like hers. One of the men was in a drunken slumber, but on his 
comrade's shouting to him that a man had fallen down the Old 
Hell Shaft, he started out to a pool of dirty water, put his head in 
it, and came back sober. 

With these two men she ran to another half a mile further, and 
with that one to another, while they ran elsewhere. Then a horse 
was found; and she got another man to ride for life or death to 
the railroad, and send a message to Louisa, which she wrote and 
gave him. By this time a whole village was up ; and windlasses, 
ropes, poles, candles, lanterns, all things necessary, were fast collect- 
ing and being brought into one place, to be carried to the Old Hell 
Shaft. 

It seemed now hours and hours since she had left the lost man 
lying in the grave where he had been buried alive. She could not 
bear to remain away from it any longer — it was like deserting 
him — and she hurried swiftly back, accompanied by a half a dozen 
labourers, including the dmnken man whom the news had sobered, 
and who was the best man of all. When they came to the Old 
Hell Shaft, they found it as lonely as she had left it. The men 
called and listened as she had done, and examined the edge of the 
chasm, and settled how it had happened, and then sat down to 
wait until the implements they wanted should come up. 

Every sound of insects in the air, every stirring of the leaves, 
every whisper among these men, made Sissy tremble, for she 
thought it was a cry at the bottom of the pit. But the wind blew 



636 HARD TIMES. 

idly over it, and no sound arose to the surface, and they sat upon 
the grass, waiting and Avaiting. After they had waited some time, 
straggling people who had heard of the accident began to come up ; 
then the real help of implements began to arrive. In the midst of 
this, Rachael returned ; and with her party there was a surgeon, 
who brought some wine and medicines. But, the expectation among 
the people that the man would be found alive, was very slight 
indeed. 

There being now people enough present to impede the work, the 
sobered man put himself at the head of the rest, or was put there 
by the general consent, and made a large ring round the Old HeU 
Shaft, and appointed men to keep it. Besides such volunteers as 
were accepted to work, only Sissy and Rachael were at first per- 
mitted within this ring ; but, later in the day, when the message 
brought an express from Coketown, Mr. Gradgrind and Louisa, and 
Mr. Bounderby, and the whelp, were also there. 

The sun was four hours lower thaii when Sissy and Rachael had 
first sat down upon the grass, before a means of enabling two men 
to descend securely was rigged with poles arfd ropes. DiflBculties 
had arisen in the construction of this machine, simple as it was ; 
requisites had been found wanting, and messages had had to go 
and return. It was five o'clock in the afternoon of the bright 
autumnal Sunday, before a candle was sent down to try the air, 
while three or four rough faces stood crowded close together, atten- 
tively watching it : the men at the windlass lowering as they were 
told. The candle was brought up again, feebly burning, and then 
some water was cast in. Then the bucket was hooked on ; and 
the sobered man and another got in with lights, giving the word 
" Lower away ! " 

As the rope went out, tight and strained, and the windlass 
creaked, there was not a breath among the one or two hundred 
men and women looking on, that came as it was wont to come. 
The signal was given and the windlass stopped, with abundant 
rope to spare. Apparently so long an interval ensued with the 
men at the windlass standing idle, that some women shrieked that 
another accident had happened ! But the surgeon who held the 
watch, declared five minutes not to have elapsed yet, and sternly 
admonished them to keep silence. He had not well done speaking, 
when the windlass was reversed and worked again. Practised eyes 
knew that it did not go as heavily as it would if both workmen 
had been coming up, and that only one was returning. 

The rope came in tight and strained ; and ring after ring was 
coiled upon the barrel of the windlass, and all eyes were fastened 
on the pit. The sobered man was brought up and leaped out 



HAED TIMES. 637 

briskly on the grass. There was an universal cry of " Alive or 
dead ? " and then a deep, profound hush. 

When he said " Alive ! " a great shout arose and many eyes had 
tears in them. 

" But he's hurt very bad," he added, as soon as he could make 
himself heard again. "Where's doctor? He's hurt so very bad, 
sir, that we donno how to get him up." 

They all consulted together, and looked anxiously at the surgeon, 
as he asked some questions, and shook his head on receiving the 
replies. The sun was setting now ; and the red light in the even- 
ing sky touched every face there, and caused it to be distinctly 
seen in all its wrapt suspense. 

The consultation ended in the men returning to the windlass,- 
and the pitman going down again, carrying the wine and some 
other small matters with him. Then the other man came up. In 
the meantime, under the surgeon's directions, some men brought a 
hurdle, on which others made a thick bed of spare clothes covered 
with loose straw, while he himself contrived some bandages and 
slings from shawls and handkerchiefs. As these were made, they 
were hung upon an arm of the pitman who had last come up, with 
instructions how to use them : and as he stood, shown by the 
light he carried, leaning his powerful loose hand upon one of the 
poles, and sometimes glancing down the pit, and sometimes glanc- 
ing round upon the people, he was not the least conspicuous figure 
in the scene. It was dark now, and torches were kindled. 

It appeared from the little this man said to those about him, 
which was quickly repeated all over the circle, that the lost man 
had fallen upon a mass of crumbled rubbish with which the pit 
was half choked up, and that his fall had been further broken by 
some jagged earth at the side. He lay upon his back with one arm 
doubled under him, and according to his own belief had hardly 
stirred since he fell, except that he had moved his free hand to a 
side pocket, in which he remembered to have some bread and meat 
(of which he had swallowed crumbs), and had likewise scooped up 
a little water in it now and then. He had come straight away 
from his work, on being written to, and had walked the whole 
journey; and was on his way to Mr. Bounderby's country 
house after dark, when he fell. He was crossing that dangerous 
country at such a dangerous time, because he was innocent of what 
was laid to his charge, and couldn't rest from coming the nearest 
way to deliver himself up. The Old Hell Shaft, the pitman said, 
with a curse upon it, was worthy of its bad name to the last ; for 
though Stephen could speak now, he believed it would soon be 
found to have mangled the life out of him. 



638 HARD TIMES. 

When all was ready, this man, still taking his last hurried charges 
from his comrades and the surgeon after the windlass had begun to 
lower him, disappeared into the pit. The rope went out as before, 
the signal was made as before, and the windlass stopped. No man 
removed his hand from it now. Every one waited with his grasp 
set, and his body bent down to the work, ready to reverse and 
wind in. At length the signal was given, ,and all the ring leaned 
forward. 

For, now, the rope came in, tightened and strained to its utmost 
as it appeared, and the men turned heavily, and the windlass com- 
plained. It was scarcely endurable to look at the rope, and think 
of its giving way. But, ring after ring was coiled upon the barrel 
of the windlass safely, and the connecting chains appeared, and 
finally the bucket with the two men holding on at the sides — a 
sight to make the head swim, and oppress the heart — and tenderly 
supporting between them, slung and tied within, the figure of a 
poor, crushed, human creature. 

A low murmur of pity went round the throng, and the women 
wept aloud, as this form, almost without form, was moved very 
slowly from its iron deliverance, and laid upon the bed of straw. 
At first, none but the surgeon went close to it. He did what he 
could in its adjustment on the couch, but the best that he could do 
was to cover it. That gently done, he called to him Rachael and 
Sissy. And at that time the pale, worn, patient face was seen 
looking up at the sky, with the broken right hand lying bare on 
the outside of the covering garments, as if waiting to be taken by 
another hand. 

They gave him drink, moistened his face with water, and admin- 
istered some drops of cordial and wine. Though he lay quite 
motionless looking up at the sky, he smiled and said, " Rachael." 

She stooped down on the grass at his side, and bent over him 
until her eyes were between his and the sky, for he could not so 
much as turn them to look at her. 

"Rachael, my dear." 

She took his hand. He smiled again and said, "Don't let 't 
go." 

" Thou'rt in great pain, my own dear Stephen ? " 

"I ha' been, but not now. I ha' been — dreadful, and dree, 
and long, my dear — but 'tis ower now. Ah, Rachael, aw a muddle ! 
Fro' first to last, a muddle ! " 

The spectre of his old look seemed to pass as he said the word. 

"I ha' fell into th' pit, my dear, as have cost wi'in the knowl- 
edge o' old fok now livin, hundreds and hundreds o' men's lives — 
fathers, sons, brothers, dear to thousands an thousands, an keep- 




STEPHEN BLACKPOOL RECOVERED FROM THE OLD HELL SHAFT. 



640 HAED TIMES. 

ing 'em fro' want and hunger. I ha' fell into a pit that ha' been 
wi' th' Fire-damp crueller than battle. I ha' read on 't in the 
public petition, as onny one may read, fro' the men that works in 
pits, in which they ha' pray'n and pray'n the lawmakers for Christ's 
sake not to let their work be murder to 'em, but to spare 'em for 
th' wives and children that they loves as well as gentlefok loves 
theirs. When it were in work, it killed wi'out need ; when 'tis let 
alone, it kills wi'out need. See how we die an no need, one way 
an another — in a muddle — every day ! " 

He faintly said it, without any anger against any one. Merely 
as the truth. 

" Thy little sister, Rachael, thou hast not forgot her. Thou'rt 
not like to forget her now, and me so nigh her. Thou know'st — 
poor, patient, suff'rin, dear — how thou didst work for her, seet'n 
all day long in her little chair at thy winder, and how she died, 
young and misshapen, awlung o' sickly air as had'n no need to be, 
an awlung o' working people's miserable homes. A muddle ! Aw 
a muddle ! " 

Louisa approached him ; but he could not see her, lying with 
his face turned up to the night sky. 

" If aw th' things that tooches us, my dear, was not so muddled, 
I should'n ha' had'n need to coom heer. If we was not in a muddle 
among ourseln, I should'n ha' been, by my own fellow weavers and 
workin' brothers, so mistook. If Mr. Bounderby had ever know'd 
me right — if he'd ever know'd me at aw — he would'n ha' took'n 
offence wi' me. He would'n ha' suspect'n me. But look up yon- 
der, Rachael ! Look aboove ! " 

Following his eyes, she saw that he was gazing at a star. 

" It ha' shined upon me," he said reverently, "in my pain and 
trouble down below. It ha' shined into my mind. I ha' look'n 
at 't and thowt o' thee, Rachael, till the muddle in my mind have 
cleared awa, above a bit, I hope. If soom ha' been wantin' in 
unnerstan'in me better, I, too, ha' been wantin' in unnerstan'in 
them better. When I got thy letter, I easily believen that what 
the yoong ledy sen and done to me, and what her brother sen and 
done to me, was one, and that there were a wicked plot betwixt 
'em. When I fell, I were in anger wi' her, an hurryin' on t' be as 
onjust t' her as oothers was t' me. But in our judgments, like as 
in our doins, we mun bear and forbear. In my pain an trouble, 
lookin up yonder, — wi' it shinin' on me — I ha' seen more clear, 
and ha' made it my dyin prayer that aw th' world may on'y coom 
toogether more, an get a better unnerstan'in o' one another, than 
when I were in't my own weak seln." 



HARD TIMES. 641 

Louisa hearing what he said, bent over him on the opposite side 
to Rachael, so that he could see her. 

"You ha' heard?" he said, after a moment's silence. "I ha' 
not forgot you, ledy." 

"Yes, Stephen, I have heard you. And your prayer is mine." 

" You ha' a father. Will yo' tak' a message to him ? " 

" He is here," said Louisa, with dread. "Shall I bring him to 
you?" 

" If yo please." 

Louisa returned with her father. Standing hand in hand, they 
both looked down upon the solemn countenance. 

" Sir, yo will clear me an mak my name good wi' aw men. 
This I leave to yo." 

Mr. Gradgrind was troubled and asked how ? 

"Sir," was the reply: "yor son will tell yo how. Ask him. 
I mak no charges : I leave none ahint me : not a single word. I 
ha' seen an spok'n wi' yor son, one night. I ask no more o' yo 
than that yo clear me — an I trust to yo to do 't." 

The bearers being now ready to carry him away, and the surgeon 
being anxious for his removal, those who had torches or lanterns, 
prepared to go in front of the litter. Before it was raised, and while 
they were arranging how to go, he said to Rachael, looking upward 
at the star : 

" Often as I coom to myseln, and found it shinin on me down 
there in my trouble, I thowt it were the star as guided to Our 
Saviour's home. I awmust think it be the very star ! " 

They lifted him up, and he was overjoyed to find that they were 
about to take him in the direction whither the star seemed to him 
to lead. 

" Rachael, beloved lass ! Don't let go my hand. We may 
walk together t'night, my dear ! " 

" I will hold thy hand, and keep beside thee, Stephen, all the 
way." 

" Bless thee ! Will soombody be pleased to coover my face ! " 

They carried him very gently along the fields, and down the 
lanes, and over the wide landscape; Rachael always holding the 
hand in hers. Very few whispers broke the mournful silence. It 
was soon a funeral procession. The star had shown him where to 
find the God of the poor ; and through humility, and sorrow, and 
forgiveness, he had gone to his Redeemer's rest. 



642 HARD TBIES. 

CHAPTER VII. 

WHELP-HUXTIXG. 

Before the ring formed round the Old HeU Shaft was broken, 
one figure had disappeared from within it. ]\Ir. Boimderby and his 
shadow had not stood near Louisa, who held her father's arm, but 
in a retu'ed place by themselves. AVhen Mr. Gradgrind was sum- 
moned to the couch, Sissy, attentive to aU that happened, slipped 
behind that wicked shadow — a sight in the horror of his face, if 
there had been eyes there for any sight but one — and whispered 
in his ear. Without turning his head, he conferred with her a few 
moments, and vanished. Thus the whelp had gone out of the 
circle before the people moved. 

"WTien the father reached home, he sent a message to Mr. 
Bounderby's, desuing his son to come to him directly. The reply 
was, that Mr. Bounderby having missed him in the crowd, and 
seeing nothing of him since, had supposed him to be at Stone 
Lodge. 

" I believe, father," said Louisa, "he will not come back to town 
to-night." Mr. Gradgrind tui'ned away, and said no more. 

In the morning, he went down to the Bank himself as soon as it 
was opened, and seeing his son's place empty (he had not the 
courage to look in at first) went back along the street to meet Mr. 
Bounderby on his way there. To whom he said that, for reasons 
he would soon explain, but entreated not then to be asked for, he 
had found it necessary to employ his son at a distance for a little 
while. Also, that he was charged with the duty of vindicat- 
ing Stephen Blackpool's memory, and declaring the thief. Mr. 
Bounderby, quite confounded, stood stock-still in the street after 
his father-in-law had left him, swelling like an immense soap- 
bubble, without its beauty. 

Mr. Gradgrind went home, locked himself in his room, and kept 
it all that day. When Sissy and Louisa tapped at his door, he 
said, without opening it, "Xot now, my dears; in the evening." 
On their return in the evening, he said, " I am not able yet — to- 
morrow." He ate nothing all day, and had no candle aft^r dark; 
and they heard him walking to and fro late at night. 

But, in the morning he appeared at breakfast at the usual hour, 
and took his usual place at the table. Aged and bent he looked, 
and quite bowed down ; and yet he looked a wiser man, and a 
better man, than in the days when iu this life he wanted nothing 
but Facts. Before he left the room, he appointed a time for them 
to come to him ; and so, with his grey head drooping, went away. 



HARD TIMES. 643 

"Dear father," said Louisa, when they kejDt their appointment, 
"you have three young children left. They will be different, / 
wiU be different yet, with Heaven's help." 

She gave her hand to Sissy, as if she meant with her help too. 

" Your wretched brother," said Mr. Gradgrind. " Do you think 
he had planned this robbery, when he went with you to the 
lodging ? " 

" I fear so, father. I know he had wanted money very much, 
and had spent a great deal." 

" The poor man being about to leave town, it came into his evil 
brain to cast suspicion on him ? " 

"I think it must have flashed upon him while he sat there, 
father. For, I asked him to go there with me. The visit did not 
originate with him." 

" He had some conversation with the poor man. Did he take 
him aside ? " 

" He took him out of the room. I asked him afterwards, why 
he had done so, and he made a plausible excuse ; but since last 
night, father, and when I remember the circumstances by its light, 
I am afraid I can imagine too truly what passed between them." 

" Let me know," said her father, " if your thoughts present your 
guilty brother in the same dark view as mine." 

"I fear, father," hesitated Louisa, "that he must have made 
some representation to Stephen Blackpool — perhaps in my name, 
perhaps in his own — which induced him to do in good faith and 
honesty, what he had never done before, and to wait about the 
Bank those two or three nights before he left the town." 

" Too plain ! " returned the father. " Too plain ! " 

He shaded his face, and remained silent for some moments. 
Recovering himself, he said : 

" And now, how is he to be found 1 How is he to be saved from 
justice? In the few hours that I can possibly aUow to elapse 
before I publish the truth, how is he to be found by us, and only 
by us? Ten thousand pounds could not effect it." 

" Sissy has effected it, father." 

He raised his eyes to where she stood, like a good fairy in his 
house, and said in a tone of softened gratitude and grateful kind- 
ness, "It is always you, my child ! " 

" We had our fears," Sissy explained, glancing at Louisa, "before 
yesterday; and when I saw you brought to the side of the litter 
last night, and heard what passed (being close to Rachael all the 
time), I went to him when no one saw, and said to him, ' Don't 
look at me. See where your father is. Escape at once, for his 
sake and your o\\ti ! ' He was in a tremble before I whispered to 



644 HAKD TIMES. 

him, and he started and trembled more then, and said, * Where can 
I go ? I have very Httle money, and I don't know who will hide 
me ! ' I thought of father's old circus. I have not forgotten 
where Mr. Sleary goes at this time of year, and I read of him in a 
paper only the other day. I told him to hurry there, and tell his 
name, and ask Mr. Sleary to hide him till I came. ' I'll get to him 
before the morning,' he said. And I saw him shrink away among 
the people." 

" Thank Heaven ! " exclaimed his father. " He may be got 
abroad yet." 

It was the more hopeful as the town to which Sissy had directed 
him was within three hours' journey of Liverpool, whence he could 
be swiftly despatched to any part of the world. But, caution being 
necessary in communicating with him — for there was a greater 
danger every moment of his being suspected now, and nobody 
could be sure at heart but that Mr. Bounderby himself, in a bully- 
ing vein of public zeal, might play a Roman part — it was con- 
sented that Sissy and Louisa should repair to the place in question, 
by a circuitous course, alone ; and that the unhappy father, setting 
forth in an opposite direction, should get round to the same bourne 
by another and wider route. It was further agreed that he should 
not present himself to Mr. Sleary, lest his intentions should be 
mistrusted, or the intelligence of his arrival should cause his son to 
take flight anew ; but, that the communication should be left to 
Sissy and Louisa to open ; and that they should inform the cause 
of so much misery and disgrace, of his father's being at hand and of 
the purpose for which they had come. When these arrangements 
had been well considered and were fully understood by all three, it 
was time to begin to carry them into execution. Early in the 
afternoon, Mr. Gradgriud walked direct from his own house into 
the country, to be taken up on the line by which he was to travel; 
and at night the remaining two set forth upon their different course, 
encouraged by not seeing any face they knew. 

The two travelled all night, except when they were left, for odd 
numbers of minutes, at branch-places, up illimitable flights of steps, 
or down wells — which was the only variety of those branches — 
and, early in the morning, were turned out on a swamp, a mile or 
two from the town they sought. From this dismal spot they were 
rescued by a savage old postilion, who happened to be up early, 
kicking a horse in a fly : and so were smuggled into the town by 
all the back lanes where the pigs lived : which, although not a 
magnificent or even savoury approach, was, as is usual in such 
cases, the legitimate highway. 

The first thing they saw on entering the town was the skeleton 



HARD TIMES. 645 

of Sleary's Ciircus. The company had departed for another town 
more than twenty miles off, and had opened there last night. The 
connection between the two places was by a hiUy tumpike-road, 
and the travelling on that road was very slow. Though they took 
but a hasty breakfast, and no rest (which it would have been in 
vain to seek under such anxious circumstances), it was noon before 
they began to find the bills of Sleary's Horseriding on barns and 
waUs, and one o'clock when they stopped in the market-place. 

A Grand Morning Performance by the Pdders, commencing at 
that very hour, was in course of announcement by the belbnan as 
they set their feet upon the stones of the street. Sissy recom- 
mended that, to avoid making inquiries and attracting attention in 
the town, they should present themselves to pay at the door. If 
Mr. Sleary were taking the money, he would be sure to know her, 
and would proceed with discretion. If he were not he would be 
sure to see them inside ; and, knowing what he had done with the 
fugitive, would proceed with discretion still. 

Therefore, they repaired, with fluttering hearts, to the well-remem- 
bered booth. The flag with the inscription Sleaey's Hoeserid- 
rs'G, was there ; and the G-othic niche was there : but ^h\ Sleary 
was not there. Master Kidderminster, gi'own too maturely turfy 
to be received by the wildest credulity as Cupid any more, had 
yielded to the invincible force of circumstances (and his beard), and, 
in the capacity of a man who made himself generally useful, presided 
on this occasion over the exchequer — having also a di'um in resei^e, 
on which to expend his leisure moments and superfluous forces. 
In the extreme sharpness of his look-out for base coin, Mr. Kidder- 
ndnster, as at present situated, never saw anything but money ; so 
Sissy passed him unrecognised, and they went in. 

The Emperor of Japan, on a steady old white horse stenciQed 
with black spots, was twirling five wash-hand basins at once, as it 
is the favourite recreation of that monarch to do. Sissy, though 
well acquainted with his Royal Hne, had no personal knowledge of 
the present Emperor, and his reign was peaceful. Miss Josephine 
Sleary, in her celebrated graceful Equestrian Tyi'olean Flower- Act, 
was then announced by a new clown (who humorously said Cauli- 
flower Act), and Mr. Sleary appeared, leading her in. 

Mr. Sleary had only made -one cut at the Clown with his long 
whip-lash, and the Clown had only said, " If you do it again, I'U 
throw the horse at you ! " when Sissy was recognised both by father 
and daughter. But they got through the Act with great self-pos- 
session ; and Mr. Sleary, saving for the first instant, conveyed no 
more expression into his locomotive eye than into his fixed one. 
The performance seemed a little long to Sissy and Louisa, particu- 



646 HARD TIMES. 

larly when it stopped to afford the Clown an opportunity of telling 
Mr. Sleary (who said " Indeed, sir ! " to all his observations in the 
calmest way, and with his eye on the house), about two legs sitting 
on three legs looking at one leg, when in came four legs, and laid 
hold of one leg, and up got two legs, caught hold of three legs, and 
threw 'em at four legs, who ran away mth one leg. For, although 
an ingenious AUegor}'- relating to a butcher, a three-legged stool, a 
dog, and a leg of mutton, this narrative consumed time ; and they 
were in great suspense. At last, however, little fair-haired Joseph- 
ine made her curtsey amid great applause; and the Clown, left 
alone in the ring, had just warmed himself, and said, " Now, Til 
have a turn ! " when Sissy was touched on the shoulder, and beck- 
oned out. 

She took Louisa with her ; and they were received by Mr. Sleary 
in a very little private apartment, with canvas sides, a grass floor, 
and a wooden ceiling all aslant, on which the box company 
stamped their approbation, as if they were coming througi\ " The- 
thilia," said Mr. Sleary, who had brandy and water at hand, "it 
doth me good to thee you. You wath alwayth a favourite with 
uth, and you've done uth credith thinth the old timeth I'm thure. 
You mutht thee our people, my dear, afore we thpeak of bithnith, 
or they'll break their hearth — ethpethially the women. Here'th 
Jothphine hath been and got married to E. W. B. Childerth, and 
thee hath got a boy, and though he'th only three yearth old, he 
thtickth on to any pony you can bring againtht him. He'th named 
The Little Wonder of Thcolathtic Equitation; and if you don't 
hear of that boy at Athley'th, you'U hear of him at Parith. And 
you recollect Kidderminthter, that wath thought to be rather 
thweet upon yourthelf? WeU. He'th married too. Married a 
widder. Old enough to be hith mother. Thee wath Tightrope, 
thee wath, and now thee'th nothing — on accounth of fat. They've 
got two children, tho we're thtrong in the Fairy bithnith and the 
jSTurthery dodge. If you wath to thee our Children in the Wood, 
with their father and mother both a dyin' on a horthe — their 
uncle a rethieving of 'em ath hith wardth, upon a horthe — them- 
thelvth both a goin' a blackberryin' on a horthe — and the Robinth 
a coming in to cover 'em with leavth, upon a horthe — you'd thay 
it wath the completetht thing ath ever you thet your eyeth on ! 
And you remember Emma Cordon, my dear, ath wath a'moth a 
mother to you 1 Of courthe you do ; I needn't athk. Well ! 
Emma, thee lotht her huthband. He wath throw'd a heavy back- 
fall off a Elephant in a thort of a Pagoda thing ath the Thultan 
of Indieth, and he never got the better of it ; and thee married 
a thecond time — married a Cheethemonger ath fell in love 



648 HARD TBIES. 

with her from the front — and he'th a Overtheer and makin' a 
fortun," 

These various changes, Mr. Sleary, veiy short of breath now, 
related with gi'eat heartiness, and with a wonderftd kind of inno- 
cence, considering what a bleary and brandv-and-watery old veteran 
he was. Afterwards he brought in Josephine, and E. W. B. 
Childers (rather deeply lined in the jaws by daylight), and the 
Little "Wonder of Scholastic Equitation, and in a word, all the 
company. Amazing creatiu-es they were in Louisa's eyes, so white 
and pink of complexion, so scant of dress, and so demonstrative of 
leg ; but it was very agreeable to see them crowding about Sissy, 
and very natural in Sissy to be unable to refrain from tears. 

"There! Now Thethilia hath kithd all the children, and 
hugged all the women, thaken handth all round with all the men, 
clear, every one of you, and ring in the band for the thecond 
part!" 

As soon as they were gone, he continued in a low tone. " Now, 
Thethilia, I don't athk to know any thecreth, but I thuppothe I 
may conthider thith to be Mith Thquire." 

" This is his sister. Yes." 

" And t'other on 'th daughter. That'h what I mean. Hope I 
thee you well, mith. And I hope the Thquire 'th well ? " 

" My father will be here soon," said Louisa, anxious to bring him 
to the point. " Is my brother safe ? " 

"Thafe and thound," he replied. "I want you jutht to take 
a peep at the Ring, mith, through here. Thethilia, you know the 
dodgeth ; find a thpy-hole for yourthelf." 

They each looked through a chink in the boards. 

" That'h Jack the Giant Killer — piethe of comic infant bith- 
nith," said Sleary. " There'th a property-houthe, you thee, for 
Jack to hide in ; there'th my Clown with a thauthepan-lid and a 
thpit, for Jack'th thervant; there'th httle Jack himthelf in a 
thplendid thoot of armour; there'th two comic black thervanth 
twithe ath big ath the houthe, to thand by it and to bring it in 
and clear it ; and the Giant (a very ecthpenthive bathket one), he 
an't on yet. Now, do you thee 'em all 1 " 

"Yes," they both said. 

" Look at 'em again," said Sleary, " look at 'em well. You thee 
'em all ? Very good. Now, mith ; " he put a form for them to 
sit on ; "I have my opinionth, and the Thquire your father hath 
hith. I don't want to know what your brother'th been up to ; ith 
better for me not to know. All I thay ith, the Thquire hath 
thood by Thethilia, and I'll thand by the Thquire. Your brother 
ith one o' them black thervanth." 



HARD TIMES. 649 

Louisa uttered an exclamation, partly of distress, partly of 
satisfaction. 

" Ith a fact," said Sleary, "and even knowin' it, you couldn't 
put your finger on him. Let the Thquire come. I thall keep 
your brother here after the performanth. I thant undreth him, 
nor yet wath hith paint off. Let the Thquire come here after the 
performanth, or come here yourthelf after the performanth, and 
you thall find your brother, and have the whole plathe to talk to 
him in. Never mind the lookth of him, ath long ath he'th well 
hid." 

Louisa, with many thanks and with a lightened load, detained 
Mr. Sleary no longer then. She left her love for her brother, with 
her eyes full of tears ; and she and Sissy went away until later in 
the afternoon. 

Mr. Gradgrind arrived within an hour afterwards. He too had 
encountered no one whom he knew ; and was now sanguine with 
Sleary's assistance of getting his disgraced son to Liverpool in the 
night. As neither of the three could be his companion without 
almost identifying him under any disguise, he prepared a letter to 
a correspondent whom he could trust, beseeching him to ship the 
bearer off at any cost, to North or South America, or any distant 
part of the world to which he could be the most speedily and 
privately despatched. 

This done, they walked about, waiting for the Circus to be 
quite vacated ; not only by the audience, but by the company and 
by the horses. After watching it a long time, they saw Mr. Sleary 
bring out a chair and sit down by the side-door, smoking ; as if 
that were his signal that they might approach. 

"Your thervant, Thquire," was his cautious salutation as they 
passed in. " If you want me you'U find me here. You muthn't 
mind your thon having a comic livery on." 

They all three went in ; and Mr. G-radgrind sat down forlorn, 
on the Clown's performing chair in the middle of the ring. On 
one of the back benches, remote in the subdued light and the 
strangeness of the place, sat the villanous whelp, sulky to the last, 
whom he had the misery to call his son. 

In a preposterous coat, like a beadle's, with cuffs and flaps exag- 
gerated to an unspeakable extent ; in an immense waistcoat, knee- 
breeches, buckled shoes, and a mad cocked hat ; with nothing 
fitting him, and everything of coarse material, moth-eaten and full 
of holes ; with seams in his black face, where fear and heat had 
started through the greasy composition daubed all over it ; any- 
thing so grimly, detestably, ridiculously shameful as the whelp in 
his comic livery, Mr. Gradgrind never could by any other means 



650 HARD TIMES. 

have believed in, weighable and measurable fact though it was. 
And one of his model children had come to this ! 

At first the whelp would not draw any nearer, but persisted in 
remaining up there by himself. Yielding at length, if any conces- 
sion so suddenly made can be called }delding, to the entreaties of 
Sissy — for Louisa he disowned altogether — he came down, bench 
by bench, until he stood in the sawdust, on the verge of the circle, 
as far as possible, within its limits from where his father sat. 

" How was this done ? " asked the father. 

" How was what done 1 " moodily answered the son. 

"This robbeiy," said the father, raising his voice upon the 
word. 

" I forced the safe myself over night, and shut it up ajar before 
I went away. I had had the key that was found, made long 
before. I dropped it that morning, that it might be supposed to 
have been used. I didn't take the money all at once. I pretended 
to put my balance away every night, but I didn't. Now you know 
all about it." 

"If a thunderbolt had faUen on me," said the father, "it would 
have shocked me less than this ! " 

"I don't see why," grumbled the son. "So many people are 
employed in situations of trust ; so many people, out of so many, 
will be dishonest. I have heard you talk, a hundred times, of its 
being a law. How can / help laws ? You have comforted others 
with such things, father. Comfort yourself ! " 

The father buried his face in his hands, and the son stood in his 
disgraceful grotesqueness, biting straw : his hands, with the black 
partly worn away inside, looking like the hands of a monkey. 
The evening was fast closing in ; and from time to time, he turned 
the whites of his eyes restlessly and impatiently towards his father. 
They were the only parts of his face that showed any life or expres- 
sion, the pigment upon it was so thick. 

" You must be got to Liverpool, and sent abroad." 

"I suppose I must. I can't be more miserable anywhere," 
whimpered the whelp, "than I have been here, ever since I can 
remember. That's one thing." 

Mr. G-radgrind went to the door, and returned with Sleary, to 
whom he submitted the question, How to get this deplorable object 
away ? 

" Why, I've been thinking of it, Thquire. There'th not muth 
time to lothe, tho you muth thay yeth or no. Ith over twenty 
mileth to the rail. There'th a coath in half an hour, that goeth to 
the rail, 'purpothe to cath the mail train. That train wHl take 
him right to Liverpool." 



HARD TIMES. 651 

"But look at Mm," gi'oaned Mr. Gradgrind. "Will any 
coach — " 

"I don't mean that he thould go in comic livery," said Sleaiy. 
" Thay the word, and I'll make a Jothkin of him, out of the ward- 
robe, in five minutes." 

"I don't understand," said Mr. Gradgrind. 

" A Jothkin — a Carter. Make up your mind quick, Th quire. 
There'll be beer to feth. I've never met with nothing but beer 
ath'U ever clean a comic blackamoor." 

Mr. Gradgrind rapidly assented ; Mr. Sleary rapidly turned out 
from a box, a small frock, a felt hat, and other essentials ; the 
whelp rapidly changed clothes behind a screen of baize ; Mr. Sleaiy 
rapidly brought beer, and washed him white again. 

"Now," said Sleaiy, "come along to the coath, and jump up 
behind ; I'll go mth you there, and they'll thuppothe you one of 
my people. Thay farewell to your family, and tharp'th the word." 
With which he delicately retired. 

"Here is your letter," said Mr. Gradgrind. " AU necessary 
means wiU be provided for you. Atone, by repentance and better 
conduct, for the shocking action you have committed, and the 
dreadful consequences to which it has led. Give me your hand, 
my poor boy, and may God forgive you as I do ! " 

The culprit was moved to a few abject tears by these words 
and their pathetic tone. But, when Louisa opened her arms, he 
repulsed her afresh. 

" Not you. I don't want to have anything to say to you ! " 

" Tom, Tom, do we end so, after all my love ! " 

" After all your love ! " he returned, obdurately. " Pretty love ! 
Lea\dng old Bounderby to himself, and packing my best friend Mr. 
Harthouse ofi", and going home just when I was in the greatest 
danger. Pretty love that ! Coming out with eveiy word about 
our having gone to that place, when you saw the net was gather- 
ing round me. Pretty love that ! You have regularly given me 
up. You never cared for me." 

" Tharp'th the word ! " said Sleary, at the door. 

They aU confusedly went out : Louisa crying to him that she 
forgave him, and loved him still, and that he would one day be 
Sony to have left her so, and glad to think of these her last words, 
far away : when some one ran against them. Mr. Gradgrind and 
Sissy, who were both before him while his sister yet clung to his 
shoulder, stopped and recoiled. 

For, there was Bitzer, out of breath, his thin lips parted, his 
thin nostrils distended, his white eyelashes quivering, his colourless 
face more colourless than ever, as if he ran himself into a white 



652 HAED TIMES. 

heat, when other people ran themselves into a glow. There he 
stood, panting and heaving, as if he had never stopped since the 
night, now long ago, when he had run them down before. 

"I'm sorry to interfere with your plans," said Bitzer, shaking 
his head, "but I can't allow myself to be done by horseriders. I 
must have young Mr. Tom ; he mustn't be got away by horseriders ; 
here he is in a smock frock, and I must have him ! " 

By the collar, too, it seemed. For, so he took possession of 
him. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

PHILOSOPHICAL. 

They went back into the booth, Sleary shutting the door to 
keep intruders out. Bitzer, still holding the paralysed culprit by 
the collar, stood in the Ring, blinking at his old patron through 
the darkness of the twilight. 

"Bitzer," said Mr. G-radgrind, broken down, and miserably sub- 
missive to him, " have you a heart ? " 

" The circulation, sir," returned Bitzer, smiling at the oddity of 
the question, " couldn't be carried on without one. No man, sir, 
acquainted with the facts established by Harvey relating to the 
circulation of the blood, can doubt that I have a heart." 

" Is it accessible," cried Mr. Gradgrind, "to any compassionate 
influence ? " 

"It is accessible to Reason, sir," returned the excellent young 
man. "And to nothing else." 

They stood looking at each other ; Mr. Gradgrind's face as white 
as the pursuer's. 

" What motive — even what motive in reason — can you have 
for preventing the escape of this wretched youth," said Mr. Grad- 
grind, "and crushing his miserable father? See his sister here. 
Pity us ! " 

"Sir," returned Bitzer, in a very business-like and logical man- 
ner, "since you ask me what motive I have in reason, for taking 
young Mr. Tom back to Coketown, it is only reasonable to let you 
know. I have suspected young Mr. Tom of this bank robbery 
from the first. I had had my eye upon him before that time, for 
I knew his ways. I have kept my observations to myself, but I 
have made them ; and I have got ample proofs against him now, 
besides his running away, and besides his own confession, which I 
was just in time to overhear. I had the pleasure of watching your 
house yesterday morning, and following you here. I am going to 



HARD TIMES. 653 

take young Mr. Tom back to Coketown, in order to deliver him 
over to Mr. Bounderby. Sir, I have no doubt whatever that Mr. 
Bounderby will then promote me to young Mr. Tom's situation. 
And I wish to have his situation, sir, for it will be a rise to me, 
and will do me good." 

" If this is solely a question of self-interest with you " Mr. 

Gradgrind began. 

"I beg your pardon for interrupting you, sir," returned Bitzer; 
"but I am sure you know that the whole social system is a ques- 
tion of self-interest. What you must always appeal to, is a per- 
son's self-interest. It's your only hold. We are so constituted. I 
was brought up in that catechism when I was very young, sir, as 
you are aware." 

"What sum of money," said Mr. Gradgrind, "will you set 
against your expected promotion?" 

" Thank you, sir," returned Bitzer, "for hinting at the proposal; 
but I will not set any sum against it. Knowing that your clear 
head would propose that alternative, I have gone over the calcula- 
tions in my mind ; and I find that to compound a felony, even on 
very high terms indeed, would not be as safe and good for me as 
my improved prospects in the Bank." 

"Bitzer," said Mr. Gradgrind, stretching out his hands as though 
he would have said. See how miserable I am ! " Bitzer, I have 
but one chance left to soften you. You were many years at my 
school. If, in remembrance of the pains bestowed upon you there, 
you can persuade yourself in any degree to disregard your present 
interest and release my son, I entreat and pray you to give him the 
benefit of that remembrance." 

" I really wonder, sir," rejoined the old pupil in an argumenta- 
tive manner, "to find you taking a position so untenable. My 
schooling was paid for ; it was a bargain ; and when I came away, 
the bargain ended." 

It was a fundamental principle of the Gradgrind philosophy that 
everything was to be paid for. Nobody was ever on any account 
to give anybody anything, or render anybody help without purchase. 
Gratitude was to be abolished, and the virtues springing from it 
were not to be. Every inch of the existence of mankind, from 
birth to death, was to be a bargain across a counter. And if we 
didn't get to Heaven that way, it was not a politico-economical 
place, and we had no business there. 

" I don't deny," added Bitzer, " that my schooling was cheap. 
But that comes right, sir. I was made in the cheapest market, 
and have to dispose of myself in the dearest." 

He was a little troubled here, by Louisa and Sissy crying. 



654 HARD TIMES. 

"Pray don't do that," said he, "it's of no use doing that: it 
only worries. You seem to think that I have some animosity 
against young Mr. Tom ; whereas I have none at all. I am only 
going, on the reasonable grounds I have mentioned, to take him 
back to Coketown. If he was to resist, I should set up the cry of 
Stop Thief! But, he won't resist, you may depend upon it." 

Mr. Sleary, who with his mouth open and his rolling eye as im- 
movably jammed in his head as his fixed one, had listened to these 
doctrines with profound attention, here stepped forward. 

"Thquire, you know perfectly well, and your daughter knowth 
perfectly well (better than you, becauthe I thed it to her), that I 
didn't know what your thon had done, and that I didn't want to 
know — I thed it wath better not, though I only thought, then, it 
wath thome thkylarking. However, thith young man having made 
it known to be a robbery of a bank, why, that'h a theriouth thing ; 
muth too theriouth a thing for me to compound, ath thith young 
man hath very properly called it. Conthequently, Thquire, you 
muthn't quarrel with me if I take thith young man'th thide, and 
thay he'th right and there'th no help for it. But I tell you what 
I'll do, Thquire ; I'll drive your thon and thith young man over to 
the rail, and prevent expothure here. I can't conthent to do more, 
but I'll do that." 

Fresh lamentations from Louisa, and deeper affliction on Mr. 
Gradgrind's part, followed this desertion of them by their last friend. 
But, Sissy glanced at him with great attention ; nor did she in her 
own breast misunderstand him. As they were all going out again, 
he favoured her with one slight roll of his movable eye, desiring 
her to linger behind. As he locked the door, he said excitedly : 

" The Thquire thtood by you, Thethilia, and I'll thtand by the 
Thquire. More than that : thith ith a prethiouth rathcal, and 
belongth to that bluthtering Cove that my people nearly pitht out 
o' winder. It'll be a dark night ; I've got a horthe that'll do any- 
thing but thpeak ; I've got a pony that'll go fifteen mile an hour 
with Childerth driving of him ; I've got a dog that'll keep a man 
to one plathe four-and-twenty hourth. Get a word with the young 
Thquire. Tell him, when he theeth our horthe begin to danthe, 
not to be afraid of being thpilt, but to look out for a pony-gig com- 
ing up. Tell him, when he theeth that gig clothe by, to jump 
down, and it'll take him off at a rattling pathe. If my dog leth 
thith young man thtir a peg on foot, I give him leave to go. And 
if my horthe ever thtirth from that thpot where he beginth a 
danthing, till the morning — I don't know him? — Tharp'th the 
word ! " 

The word was so sharp, that in ten minutes Mr. Childers, saun- 



HAKD TIMES. 655 

tering about the market-place iu a pair of slippers, had his cue, 
and Mr. Sleary's equipage was ready. It was a fine sight, to 
behold the learned dog barking round it, and ]Mr. Sleaiy instruct- 
ing him, with his one practicable eye, that Bitzer was the object 
of his particular attentions. Soon after dark they all three got in 
and started ; the learned dog (a formidable creature) already pin- 
ning Bitzer with his eye, and sticking close to the wheel on his side, 
that he might be ready for him in the event of his showing the 
sUghtest disposition to alight. 

The other three set up at the inn all night in great suspense. 
At eight o'clock in the morning Mr. Sleary and the dog reappeared : 
both in high spirits. 

"AU right, Thquire ! '' said Mr. Sleary, "your thon may be 
aboard-a-thip by thith time. Childerth took him off", an hour and 
a half after we left here latht night. The horthe danthed the 
polka till he wath dead beat (he would have walthed if he hadn't 
been in harneth), and then I gave him the word and he went to 
thleep comfortable. When that prethiouth young Rathcal thed 
he'd go for'ard afoot, the dog hung on to hith neck-hankercher with 
all four legth in the air and pulled him down and rolled him over. 
Tho he come back into the drag, and there he that, 'till I turned 
the horthe'th head, at half-patht thixth thith morning." 

Mr. Gradgrind overwhelmed him with thanks, of course ; and 
hinted as delicately as he could, at a handsome remuneration in 
money. 

"I don't want money mythelf, Thquire; but Childerth ith a 
family man, and if you wath to like to offer him a five-pound note, 
it mightn't be unactheptable. Likewithe if you wath to thtand a 
coUar for the dog, or a thet of bellth for the horthe, I thould be 
very glad to take 'em. Brandy and water I alwayth take." He 
had already called for a glass, and now caUed for another. " If 
you wouldn't think it going too far, Thquire, to make a little 
thpread for the company at about three and thixth a head, not 
reckoning Luth, it would make 'em happy." 

All these little tokens of his gratitude, Mr. Gradgrind very will- 
ingly undertook to render. Though he thought them far too slight, 
he said, for such a service. 

" Very well, Thquire ; then, if you'll only give a Hortheriding, a 
bethpeak, whenever you can, you'll more than balanthe the account. 
Now, Thquire, if your daughter will ethcuthe me, I thould like one 
parting word with you." 

Louisa and Sissy withdrew into an adjoining room; Mr. Sleary, 
stirring and drinking his brandy and water as he stood, went 
on : 



656 HARD TIMES. 

" Thquire, you don't need to be told that dogth ith wonderful 
animalth." 

" Their instinct," said Mr. Gradgrind, "is surprising." 

" Whatever you call it — and I'm bletht if/ know what to call 
it" — said Sleary, "it ith athtonithing. The way in with a dog'll 
find you — the dithtanthe he'll come ! " 

"His scent," said Mr. Gradgrind, "being so fine." 

"I'm bletht if I know what to call it," repeated Sleary, shaking 
his head, " but I have had dogth find me, Thquire, in a way that 
made me think whether that dog hadn't gone to another dog, and 
thed, ' You don't happen to know a perthon of the name of Thleary, 
do you ? Perthon of the name of Thleary, in the Horthe-Riding 
way — thtout man — game eye ? ' And whether that dog mightn't 
have thed, ' Well, I can't thay I know him mythelf, but I know 
a dog that I think would be likely to be acquainted with him.' 
And whether that dog mightn't have thought it over, and thed, 
'Thleary, Thleary! yeth, to be sure! A friend of mine men- 
thioned him to me at one time. I can get you hith addreth directly.' 
In conthequenth of my being afore the public, and going about tho 
muth, you thee, there mutht be a number of dogth acquainted with 
me, Thquire, that / don't know ! " 

Mr. Gradgrind seemed to be quite confounded by this speculation. 

" Anyway," said Sleary, after putting his lips to his brandy and 
water, "ith fourteen months ago, Thquire, thinthe we wath at 
Chethter. We wath getting up our Children in the Wood one 
morning, when there cometh into our Ring, by the thtage door, a 
dog. He had travelled a long way, he wath in very bad condithon, 
he wath lame, and pretty well blind. He went round to our chil- 
dren, one after another, as if he wath a-theeking for a child he 
know'd ; and then he come to me, and throwd hithelf up behind, 
and thtood on hith two forelegth, weak ath he wath, and then he 
wagged hith tail and died. Thquire, that dog wath Merrylegth." 

" Sissy's father's dog ! " 

" Thethilia'th father 'th old dog. Now, Thquire, I can take my 
oath, from my knowledge of that dog, that that man wath dead — 
and buried — afore that dog come back to me. Joth'phine and 
Childerth and me talked it over a long time, whether I thould write 
or not. But we agreed, 'No. There'th nothing comfortable to 
tell; why unthettle her mind, and make her unhappy?' Tho, 
whether her father bathely detherted her ; or whether he broke 
hith own heart alone, rather than pull her down along with him ; 
never will be known, now, Thquire, till — no, not till we know 
how the dogth findth uth out ! " 

"She keeps the bottle that he sent her for, to this hour; and 



HARD TIMES. 657 

she will believe in his affection to the last moment of her life," said 
Mr. Gradgrind. 

"It theemth to prethent two thingth to a perthon, don't it, 
Thquire 1 " said Mr. Sleary, musing as he looked down into the 
depths of his brandy and water : " one, that there ith a love in the 
world, not all Thelf-interetht after all, but thomething very differ- 
ent ; t'other, that it hath a way of ith own of calculating or not 
calculating, whith thomehow or another ith at leatht ath hard to 
give a name to, ath the wayth of the dogth ith ! " 

Mr. Gradgrind looked out of window, and made no reply. Mr. 
Sleary emptied his glass and recalled the ladies. 

" Thethilia my dear, kith me and good-bye ! Mith Thquire, to thee 
you treating of her like a thithter, and a thithter that you trutht 
and honour with all your heart and more, ith a very pretty thight to 
me. I hope your brother may live to be better detherving of you, 
and a greater comfort to you. Thquire, thake handth, firtht and 
latht ! Don't be croth with uth poor vagabondth. People mutht 
be amuthed. They can't be alwayth a learning, not yet they can't 
be alwayth a working, they an't made for it. You mutht have uth, 
Thquire. Do the withe thing and the kind thing too, and make 
the betht of uth ; not the wurtht ! 

"And I never thought before," said Mr, Sleary, putting his head 
in at the door again to say it, "that I wath tho muth of a 
Cackler ! » 



CHAPTER IX. 

PINAL. 

It is a dangerous thing to see anything in the sphere of a vain 
blusterer, before the vain blusterer sees it himself Mr. Bounderby 
felt that Mrs. Sparsit had audaciously anticipated him, and pre- 
sumed to be wiser than he. Inappeasably indignant with her for 
her triumphant discovery of Mrs. Pegler, he turned this presumption, 
on the part of a woman in her dependent position, over and over in 
his mind, until it accumulated with turning like a great snowball. 
At last he made the discovery that to discharge this highly connected 
female — to have it in his power to say, " She was a woman of 
family, and wanted to stick to me, but I wouldn't have it, and got 
rid of her" — would be to get the utmost possible amount of 
crowning glory out of the connection, and at the same time to 
punish Mrs. Sparsit according to her deserts. 

Filled fuller than ever, with this great idea, Mr. Bounderby 
came in to lunch, and sat himself down in the dining-room of 



658 HARD TIMES. 

former days, where his portrait was. Mrs. Sparsit sat by the fire, 
with her foot in her cotton stirrup, little thinking whither she was 
posting. 

Since the Pegler affair, this gentlewoman had covered her pity 
for Mr. Bounderby, with a veil of quiet melancholy and contrition. 
In virtue thereof, it had become her habit to assume a woful look, 
which woful look she now bestowed upon her patron. 

"What's the matter now, ma'am?" said Mr. Bounderby, in a 
very short, rough way. 

"Pray, sir," returned Mrs, Sparsit, "do not bite my nose off." 

" Bite your nose off, ma'am ? " repeated Mr. Bounderby. " Your 
nose ! " meaning, as Mrs. Sparsit conceived, that it was too devel- 
oped a nose for the purpose. After which offensive implication, he 
cut himself a crust of bread, and threw the knife down with a 
noise. 

Mrs. Sparsit took her foot out of her stirrup, and said, "Mr. 
Bounderby, sir ! " 

"Well, ma'am?" retorted Mr. Bounderby. "What are you 
staring at ? " 

"May I ask, sir," said Mrs. Sparsit, "have you been ruffled this 
morning ? " 

"Yes, ma'am." 

"May I inquire, sir," pursued the injured woman, "whether / 
am the unfortunate cause of your having lost your temper ? " 

" Now, I'll tell you what, ma'am," said Bounderby, " I am not 
come here to be bullied. A female may be highly connected, but 
she can't be permitted to bother and badger a man in my position, 
and I am not going to put up with it." (Mr. Bounderby felt it 
necessary to get on : foreseeing that if he allowed of details, he would 
be beaten.) 

Mrs. Sparsit first elevated, then knitted, her Coriolanian eye- 
brows ; gathered up her work into its proper basket ; and rose. 

" Sir," said she, majestically. "It is apparent to me that I am 
in your way at present. I will retire to my own apartment." 

"Allow me to open the door, ma'am." 

" Thank you, sir ; I can do it for myself." 

"You had better allow me, ma'am," said Bounderby, passing 
her, and getting his hand upon the lock ; "because I can take the 
opportunity of saying a word to you, before you go. Mrs. Sparsit, 
ma'am, I rather think you are cramped here, do you know? It 
appears to me, that, under my humble roof, there's hardly opening 
enough for a lady of your genius in other people's affairs." 

Mrs. Sparsit gave him a look of the darkest scorn, and said with 
great politeness, " Really, sir ? " 



HARD TIMES. 659 

" I have been thinking it over, you see, since the late affairs 
have happened, ma'am," said Bounderby; "and it appears to my 
poor judgment " 

"Oh ! Pray, sir," Mrs. Sparsit interposed, with sprightly cheer- 
fulness, "don't disparage your judgment. Everybody knows how 
unerring Mr. Bounderby 's judgment is. Everybody has had proofs 
of it. It must be the theme of general conversation. Disparage 
anything in yourself but your judgment, sir," said Mrs. Sparsit, 
laughing. 

Mr. Bounderby, very red and uncomfortable, resumed : 

" It appears to me, ma'am, I say, that a different sort of estab- 
lishment altogether would bring out a lady of your powers. Such 
an establishment as your relation. Lady Scadgers's, now. Don't 
you think you might find some affairs there, ma'am, to interfere 
with?" 

" It never occurred to me before, sir," returned Mrs. Sparsit ; 
"but now you mention it, I should think it highly probable." 

"Then suppose you try, ma'am," said Bounderby, laying an 
envelope with a cheque in it in her little basket. "You can take 
your own time for going, ma'am ; but perhaps in the meanwhile, it 
will be more agreeable to a lady of your powers of mind, to eat her 
meals by herself, and not to be intruded upon. I really ought to 
apologise to you — being only Josiah Bounderby of Coketown — 
for having stood in your light so long." 

"Pray don't name it, sir," returned Mrs. Sparsit. "If that 
portrait could speak, sir — but it has the advantage over the orig- 
inal of not possessing the power of committing itself and disgusting 
others, — it would testify, that a long period has elapsed since I 
first habitually addressed it as the picture of a Noodle. Nothing 
that a Noodle does, can awaken surprise or indignation ; the pro- 
ceedings of a Noodle can only inspire contempt." 

Thus saying, Mrs. Sparsit, with her Roman features like a medal 
struck to commemorate her scorn of Mr. Bounderby, surveyed him 
fixedly from head to foot, swept disdainfully past him, and ascended 
the staircase. Mr. Bounderby closed the door, and stood before 
the fire ; projecting himself after his old explosive manner into his 
portrait — and into futurity. 

Into how much of futurity % He saw Mrs. Sparsit fighting out 
a daily fight at the points of aU the weapons in the female armoury, 
with the grudging, smarting, peevish, tormenting Lady Scadgers, 
still laid up in bed with her mysterious leg, and gobbling her 
insufficient income down by about the middle of every quarter, in a 
mean little airless lodging, a mere closet for one, a mere crib for 



660 ' HARD TIMES. 

two j but did he see more ? Did he catch any glimpse of himself 
making a show of Bitzer to strangers, as the rising young man, so 
devoted to his master's great merits, who had won young Tom's 
place, and had almost captured young Tom himself, in the times 
when by various rascals he was spirited away ? Did he see any 
faint reflection of his own image making a vainglorious will, 
whereby five-and-twenty Humbugs, past five-and-fifty years of 
age, each taking upon himself the name, Josiah Bounderby of 
Coketown, should for ever dine in Bounderby Hall, for ever lodge 
in Bounderby Buildings, for ever attend a Bounderby chapel, for 
ever go to sleep under a Bounderby chaplain, for ever be supported 
out of a Bounderby estate, and for ever nauseate all healthy 
stomachs, with a vast amount of Bounderby balderdash and bluster ? 
Had he any prescience of the day, five years to come, when Josiah 
Bounderby of Coketown was to die of a fit in the Coketown street, 
and this same precious will was to begin its long career of quibble, 
plunder, false pretences, vile example, little service and much law ? 
Probably not. Yet the portrait was to see it all out. 

Here was Mr. Gradgrind on the same day, and in the same hour, 
sitting thoughtful in his own room. How much futurity did he 
see? Did he see himself, a white-haired decrepit man, bending 
his hitherto inflexible theories to appointed circumstances ; making 
his facts and figures subservient to Faith, Hope, and Charity ; and 
no longer trying to grind that Heavenly trio in his dusty little 
mills ? Did he catch sight of himself, therefore much despised by 
his late political associates 1 Did he see them, in the era of its 
being quite settled that the national dustmen have only to do with 
one another, and owe no duty to an abstraction called a People, 
" taunting the honourable gentleman " with this and with that and 
with what not, five nights a week, until the small hours of the 
morning? Probably he had that much foreknowledge knowing 
his men. 

Here was Louisa on the night of the same day, watching the 
fire as in days of yore, though with a gentler and a humbler face. 
How much of the future might arise before her vision ? Broadsides 
in the streets, signed with her father's name, exonerating the late 
Stephen Blackpool, weaver, from misplaced suspicion, and publish- 
ing the guilt of his own son, with such extenuation as his years 
and temptation (he could not bring himself to add, his education) 
might beseech; were of the Present. So, Stephen Blackpool's 
tombstone, with her father's record of his death, was almost of the 
Present, for she knew it was to be. These things she could plainly 
see. But, how much of the Future ? 



HAKD TIMES. 661 

■'ing woman, christened Eachael, after a long illness once 
^ring at the ringing of the Factory bell, and passing to 
, !,e set hours, among the Coketown Hands ; a woman of 
M . -T-, always dressed in black, but sweet-tempered and 
K ^ rt ue, 1 and e^ >n cheerful ; who, of all the people in the place, 
alone almp.Mred +o have compassion on a degraded, drunken wretch 
of 1. a sex, who was sometimes seen in the town secretly beg- 

ging vi |]iei , auf' crying to her ; a woman working, ever working, 
but '"ont.ent to 'lo it, and preferring to do it as her natural lot, 
unto shA ehoukt be too old to labour any more 1 Did Louisa see 
this ? Sjioh a thing was to be. 

A lonely brotlior, many thousands of miles away, writing, on 
pape>' blotted mth tears, that her words had too soon come true, 
and ' :.; ill '. . 9asures in the world would be cheaply bartered 
for a :; L ; • lear face ? At length this brother coming nearer 
hom(-, ■'.viti hoj^v; of seeing her, and being delayed by illness ; and 
then a le.ter, in a strange hand, saying "he died in hospital, of 
fever supl a day, and died in penitence and love of you : his last 
word bf^ir;'' yimr name " ? Did Louisa see these things ? Such 
thin^ . r: to be. 

H ' i/a in a wife — a mother — lovingly watchful of her chil- 
dren, .irefi;! that they should have a childhood of the mind no 
less 1 ...., . ;iiildlKiod of the body, as knowing it to be even a more 
beautiful. tiling, aud a possession, any hoarded scrap of which, is a 
blessing, aid Ijappiness to the wisest ? Did Louisa see this ? Such 
a thing Tai'.ivtn-er to be. 

But, I'upp}' Sissy's happy children loving her ; all children lov- 
ing her; she, grown learned in childish lore; thinking no innocent 
and ].»rety fancy ever to be despised; trjdng hard to know her 
humbler fellow (u-eatures, and to beautify their lives of machinery 
and reality witli those imaginative graces and delights, without 
whicli tie heart of infancy will wither up, the sturdiest physi- 
cal m inhiod wi'! i.e morally stark death, and the plainest national 
prosp,;i% fig-\ire,i can show, will be the Writing on the Wall, — 
she lokljig this course as part of no fantastic vow, or bond, or 
broth .;rh.>od, or sisterhood, or pledge, or covenant, or fancy dress, 
or fancy fair ; but simply as a duty to be done, — did Louisa see 
these things of herself? These things were to be. 

Dear reader ! It rests with you and me, whether, in our two 
fields of ti-tion, sindlar things shall be or not. Let them be ! We 
shall ,sit T.ith lighter bosoms on the hearth, to see the ashes of our 
fires turn ^-ey and cold. 



THE NOVELS OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

New Edition, with all the Original Illustrations. 

i2nio. Cloth. $i.oo each volume. 

These volumes are in all cases accurate reprints of the texts of the first editions, 
and are accompanied by all the original illustrations. There is also prefixed in each 
volume a short introduction written by Mr. Charles Dickens, the novelist's eldest 
son, giving a history of the writing and publication of each book, together with 
other details, biographical and bibliographical, likely to be of interest to the reader- 



NOW READY. 



THE PICKWICK PAPERS. 

50 Illustrations. 

OLIVER TWIST. 

27 Illustrations. 

NICHOLAS NICKLEBY. 

44 Illustrations. 

MARTIN CHUZZLEWIT. 

41 Illustrations. 

THE OLD CURIOSITY SHOP. 

97 Illustrations. 

BARNABY RUDGE. 

76 Illustrations. 

SKETCHES BY BOZ. 
44 Illustrations. 



DOMBEY AND SON. 

40 Illustrations. 

CHRISTMAS BOOKS. 

65 Illustrations. 

DAVID COPPERFIELD. 

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AMERICAN NOTES and PIC- 
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4 Illustrations. 

LETTERS. 1833-1870. 
LITTLE DORRIT. 
I BLEAK HOUSE. 



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CHRISTMAS STORIES. 

AMERICAN NOTES and RE- 
PRINTED PIECES. 

HARD TIMES and PICTURES 
FROM ITALY. 

A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENG- 
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TALE OF TWO CITIES. 



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